Fighting talk from Galthie should put fear in rivals
It should come as precisely no surprise that France head coach Fabien Galthie reckons he knows 90 per cent of his squad for the next World Cup, two years before the first match kicks off. It’s not hard to imagine that every international coach could name the bulk of their preferred squad for France 2023, in private if not in public. That’s the relatively easy bit.
It’s always that last ten per cent – those final few hard-call names – that is difficult. Which player best fits the overall gameplan? Who complements a nailed-on option better? Who can the coach call on for a very specific role?
They are the ones Galthie was looking for on the Australian tour – which makes this the more interesting, and potentially scary, quote: “In 17 matches, we have used 67 players. That’s more than the objective I set myself.
“I wanted to get 50 players – three per position. We are at four per position. With 67 players, the group is not complete but we have identified almost all the available potential.”
Galthie – contracted to the end of the 2023 World Cup – has long counted his tenure as head coach in terms of games played and games to play.
If all goes according to his grand plan between now and then, he has somewhere in the region of 29 matches to the World Cup final – 22 or so of those before he names his final squad for the tournament, and perhaps 19 before the warm-up matches.
That means Galthie’s more than 40 per cent of the way through his available pre-World Cup gametime.
“Our ambition is to continue to develop and strengthen this team,” Galthie said, in a sentence that should probably have rival coaches reaching for the purely medicinal gin.
“[This team] is once again among the best in the world. In the last two years, they have won in Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Australia, and when they lost in England, it was on the last play.”
“They used to call us ‘a sleeping giant’ – that’s no longer the case.”
If the earlier quote was interesting, and potentially scary, that one was a revelation.
Galthie has never been shy about publicising his own achievements, but this is about the first time he’s out-andout claimed Les Bleus are a serious rugby force again on his watch. He’s said it was an ambition; and no one in the top echelons of the FFR has made any secret of the fact France want to challenge at their home World Cup, but this is something new. It’s just 13 words, but it feels important. It has the air of a key stage along the route he’s set.
And it’s one that apparently, given he’s blooded more players than he had anticipated by now, has come earlier than anticipated.
Of course, the rapid pace of development has not all been down to him. He would be much closer to the 50 he had expected had it not been for the row and subsequent agreement over player release for the Autumn Nations Cup tournament last November, and Australia’s Covid-19 quarantine rules leaving him shorn of Toulouse and La Rochelle players for this month’s tour.
In the end, that may work well for him, and France. Early squad list names Antoine Dupont, Romain Ntamack, Julien Marchand, Thomas Ramos, Gregory Alldritt and Brice Dulin are among those who have had a break; while he has had the chance to give Baptiste Couilloud, Arthur Vincent and Jonathan Danty a run.
Galthie namechecked nine players on tour who made their marks: hooker Gaetan Barlot, flanker Cameron Woki, full-back Melvyn Jaminet, captain Anthony Jelonch, wing Gabin Villiere, centres Vincent, Danty and PierreLouis Barassi, and prop Sipili Falatea.
Those last two did not play much in Australia. Barassi was there for all 80
minutes of the final Test, having been out of the matchday 23 for the first two games, while Falatea was a second-half replacement in the first, and started the last – playing about a full match in total.
But Galthie sets a lot of store in what happens during training – it’s one of the justifications for making Teddy Thomas something of a go-to player for him out wide, despite niggling injuries and sometimes patchy club form.
“Barassi only played one game but he made the most of it,” Galthie said of one member of his graduating French class of Australia ‘21. “He has more than what you see during the games. It’s all about the training and community life and Pierre-Louis has been very prolific.
“Selection is earned in training – it is earned every day. We were able to talk with these players, they have reached the levels we were looking for.”
And then there were those who did not play. “Florent Vanverbeghe has great potential,” Galthie said. “Thomas Lavault, from La Rochelle, who we couldn’t take, too. Or Matthis Lebel, who was a finalist with Toulouse, and Donovan Taofifenua, from Racing 92.”
But, do you know what’s really scary from the post-Australia coaches’ media appearances? While Galthie – despite his ‘sleeping giants’ comment – rather danced round the subject of the current talent mine at his disposal, attack coach Laurent Labit made no attempt to hide the ambition among the France staff. This isn’t – entirely – about the next World Cup. The coaches are legacy building.
“Our short-term mission is 2023,” Labit said. “But let’s not forget that there will also be a post-2023 period. We have players who are 22, 23-years-old, who are going to play in two or three World Cups. We don’t know what we will do after 2023, but [the intention] is also to pass on and to leave something so that French rugby can compete with the best for many years.”
It seems, then, that though 2023 may be the be-all, it is not the end-all for France any more. For a rugby nation that has stubbornly and persistently thought in four-year World Cup cycles, this is perhaps the biggest, most important difference developing under the current regime.
“They used to call us a ‘sleeping giant’ - that’s no longer the case” - Fabien Galthie