Bernard Laporte still calling the shots on squad selection
When can a foreigner play for France these days? When Federation president Bernard Laporte says so, that’s when.
That is the remarkable situation to emerge from manager Jacques Brunel’s squad of 31 to face three big games next month.
No matter what World Rugby say, Laporte has his own qualification for accepting men born and bred beyond French borders into his national team.
Not for him the official three-year residential requirement for those never having represented another country at senior level.
Laporte, even contradicting his own stance of just a few months ago, now insists that foreigners who meet those terms must also brandish a French passport to get a game.
And that is why Brunel, who had always intended to select South African Paul Willemse, the Montpellier lock, and Fijian Alivereti Raka, the Clermont winger, was obliged to leave them out at the eleventh hour.
Both men were available for selection, according to the world governing body.
Midi Olympique, the authoritative French rugby paper, were so convinced Willemse, for one, would be named they displayed a prominent interview with him just 48 hours before the squad was made public.
Unaware that Laporte, who used to select all the players when manager, had not lost the habit in his more exalted position.
Laporte, right, acknowledged his own decisive part in the choice of players when he tweeted: “A player must always be of French nationality to play for France. That is my commitment and I thank the staff who have taken it into account.”
Back in May, Laporte announced: “From the moment a player makes a request to have French nationality, I consider him available for selection.”
Willemse and Raka had both sent off the appropriate forms, learned La Marseillaise and mugged up on the history of the Revolution.
They now know that is no longer enough, though it is a fair bet that they will both be turning out, passports at the ready, in the next Six Nations and, if all goes well, the World Cup.
It is not unusual for Laporte, with his quickfire verbal delivery, to change his story with disconcerting speed. When he hired Brunel, he said the contract would expire at the end of the World Cup.
Now he has revealed to overall surprise that Brunel’s last hurrah will, in fact, be on the occasion of the 2020 Six Nations. Thereby giving potential successors like Racing pair Laurent Travers and Laurent Labit as well as Christophe Urios, the Castres champion, and Lyon’s Pierre Mignoni something to think about.
The case of foreigners wearing the France shirt has long been a vexed question.
There have been 19 of them altogether in modern times. In fact, there were five – South Africans Rory Kockott, Scott Spedding and Bernard Le Roux, Fijian Noa Nakaitaci and Kiwi Uini Atonio – at the last World Cup. Not all had French passports.
Laporte, himself, as national team manager at the turn of the century, gave many caps to South African prop Pieter de Villiers before and after he was naturalised and to Kiwi centre Tony Marsh.
His policy of tightening procedures now is supposed to favour the emergence of young, home-grown talent although the temptation to look abroad still clearly persists.
At least he has one promising French newcomer who fits his ideal for the future in the squad to face South Africa, Argentina and Fiji.
That is 20-year-old colossus Demba Bamba, the tight-head prop who will leave Brive next summer for a fiveyear contract with Lyon.
Bamba, born in Paris suburbs of Mauritanean parents, stands above six feet and weighs in just short of 20 stones. He was a national judo champ at 14 and a skilled handball player.
Two sports which have improved his strength in combat and, less commonly, developed a deft touch with his hands.
Bamba is the only member of France’s U20 World Cup-winning squad to have been promoted. Another six, though, including highly-touted Racing No.8 Jordan Joseph, Toulon fly-half Louis Carbonel and Toulouse
“At least Laporte has one promising French newcomer who fits his ideal for the future, the 20-year-old colossus Demba Bamba”
fly-half Romain Ntamack have made the French Barbarians squad to face Tonga in Bordeaux next month.
There is so much talk of exciting renewal in France they were probably disappointed not to have stepped up even higher.
Brunel, though, has been fairly conservative in his approach by retaining 20 of the players soundly and expectedly beaten by the All Blacks in New Zealand last summer.
He has resolved an unnecessary spat with Louis Picamoles by returning him to the squad at No.8, although so few were the fit candidates he was virtually obliged to select him in that role.
He has given a debut selection to Toulouse hooker Julien Marchand and has established Clermont pair Camille Lopez and Morgan Parra as his dream half-back partnership.