C’est magnifique
Inside story of the greatest ever Twickenham try – 30 years on
The old adage says that international teams should gingerly size each other up in the first quarter, push and probe, get in the groove and not take too many risks. Then there is the French approach, epitomised by Serge Blanco, a troubadour with studs on.
Adventure and audacity are writ large on his calling card. What he started, others finished.
“When Serge sniffs the wind in the air, seeks out possibility, you know that it is going to produce a beautiful scent,” said former France wing Philippe Saint-andre.
And so it came to pass, a try of such daring, imagination and technical excellence that it is seared in the memory.
Saturday’s game is the 30th anniversary of the try, the greatest scored at Twickenham. The vividness of it all makes it feels like yesterday. The final match of the 1991 Five Nations Championship had echoes of the previous year: a Grand Slam shoot-out between two unbeaten sides, France replacing Scotland as England’s opponent.
The shock loss in Murrayfield 12 months earlier had scarred England; they were taking no chances this time. Gently does it as Simon Hodgkinson knocked over an early penalty. On a grey, damp Twickenham afternoon, the clock ticked to the 10-minute mark. Hodgkinson lined up another shot at goal.
It was a difficult pot, and the ball just edged across the posts into the dead-ball area. Hodgkinson looked on ruefully. Several England players turned on their heels to get ready for a routine France 22-metre dropout. Blanco does not do routine, however.
It was Pierre Berbizier who fielded Hodgkinson’s failed kick. The France scrum-half might well have touched the ball down, but for a bellowing call to his right.
“Give me the ball,” Blanco tells The Daily Telegraph from his base in Biarritz as he recalls what he shouted to Berbizier.
“Of course, I did not imagine that we would score a try 110metres up the field, but what I did know was that there was possibility there.
“I could see the English just drifting back. We were all aware that we had to find a way to express ourselves that day, somehow, anyhow. England were big favourites. We had been written off at the start of the tournament, but we knew we had something to offer.
“By the time we got to Twickenham, it was about contributing our value to the match, to show who we were and what we were about. Counter-attack is in our blood. It was time to be true to who we were.”
What France were about in that spine-tingling sequence of play was a team in perfect harmony with each other. It was bold and it was spellbinding.
“I almost applauded it myself,” England hooker Brian Moore recalls. “I was supposed to cover the drop-out on the 22, so when I saw the ball reach Blanco I put my head down to trot those few metres back. By the time I lifted my head again …”
France were on the move. Blanco broke into that distinctive loping stride of his, coming out from behind the posts and moving to the right, where he passed to Jean-baptiste Lafond, who quickly shipped the ball on to Philippe Sella.
The centre made ground before coming infield to find support in the form of Didier Camberabero, who looped around him.
It looked as if the fly-half was a certainty to get smashed into touch. A certainty, that is, until Camberabero executed the most precise chip and gather kick, over the head of Rory Underwood.
“I got a fingertip to the ball as I jumped up to try to charge it down, and I’ve always wondered if that little deflection helped the ball land exactly back in Didier’s hand,” says Underwood, who scored England’s only try that day in their 21-19 win.
“Yeah, but mine was straightforward. Theirs was a real team try. That’s what I’ve always loved about French rugby.
“Serge started something and everyone reacted immediately, just clicked into gear, all on the same wavelength, running the right lines, embracing the moment.
“Only the French can do this, with this sort of style and panache.”
Even after Camberabero had fielded his own chip at around halfway, there was still a fair bit to do. And it was done. Infield was Saintandre, who went on to captain his country 34 times during a career in which he scored 32 tries in 69 Tests. That day, though, he was the youngster, the rookie in only his seventh Test. The 23-year-old had tracked play and signalled to his fly-half that he was free up the middle.
Over came the kick. One bounce. Two bounces. Saint-andre had to check his stride.
“It was exciting, frenetic, fantastic, but do you know what I was thinking?” Saint-andre says. “That if I didn’t gather this ball safely then my international career would be over before it had really started. These great men all around me – Blanco, Sella, Berbizier, [Franck] Mesnel. I had to take it cleanly.”
And he did, Saint-andre just managing to elude a despairing lastditch dive and attempted ankle tap-tackle by Jeremy Guscott.
“Magnifique,” screamed the French television commentator. There was not a single person at Twickenham, English, French or otherwise, who would have disagreed with that instant assessment. France actually scored another fabulous try through Mesnel later in the game.
They scored three in total and at the final whistle were pressing for the score that would have brought them their third Grand Slam in a decade.
“I was gasping for breath in the last five to 10 minutes, desperately chasing from side to side as France kept coming at us,” Moore said.
“It was some sort of backhanded compliment that they played like that against us, chancing their arm because they knew we had the edge in the forwards. I used to love playing against France. And, yes, I did enjoy winding them up.
“Philippe [Saint-andre] told me that when he was captain he used to tell his pack not to pay any attention to that ---- Moore but as he was laying down the law about the need for restraint and self-discipline, he could see in their eyes that he had already lost them and that all they wanted to do was fight me.”
Moore’s pithy assessment of the essence of French rugby as like “15 Eric Cantonas – brilliant but brutal” has stood the test of time.
The rivalry across the early years of the 1990s was fierce, even if England did win eight times in a row.
“It was why that day we knew we had to be the masters of disorder, to break up the game, to keep away from the English forwards who could asphyxiate us and to profit from messiness in unstructured play,” says Saint-andre.
They certainly managed to do that. And for that we can all be thankful.
‘I could see the English drifting back. We had to find a way to express ourselves, somehow’