French penchant for ill discipline strikes again

Brendan Gallagher delves into some of rugby’s most enduring images, their story and why they are still so impactful

What’s happening here?

Its March 8, 2020 and Scotland are playing France in front of a packed house at Murrayfield, on the eve of Covid. France have just taken a 7-6 lead but it’s getting very heated as half-time approaches and a general scuffle breaks out. It is mainly a 21st century half-hearted handbags at dawn affair but then France prop Mohamed Haouas gets involved and lands a perfectly timed right arm jab on the nose of Scotland flanker Jamie Ritchie. It was over in a flash, you might have missed it, but the camera never lies.

The story behind the picture?

French volatility under pressure has become a cliche in the game and has cost them dear over the decades. The latest example had been at RWC2019 when they seemed to have the beating of Wales in the quarter-final at which point giant lock Sébastien Vahaamahina indulged in some mindless thuggery and France lost all focus and went down 20-19 in a game they should have won.

Plotting against France that day was Wales assistant coach Shaun Edwards who on returning home was about to take up a contract to serve as France’s assistant coach, with specific responsibility for defence and discipline.

Edwards was/is a famously hard taskmaster but also an inspirational coach who made world-class defence a badge of honour. He teaches players to work off their anger by making a succession of atomising legal hits, go in low and hit up as hard as possible. Don’t give the referee any reason to doubt you.

Edwards’ motto is that tackling is your war zone where you make your big, wounding, hits on the opposition. You don’t have to play outside the law to make your point and impose your dominance.

What happened next?

Well in this match France, having made a decent start, rather fell apart and ended up losing 28-17. As they won their other four games in fine style you could argue this was a sending off and moment of madness that cost them a Grand Slam although that would be to underestimate just how well Scotland played on the day.

What it did do though was to strengthen Edwards’ hand going forward. French rugby would continue to underperform and fail to do itself justice all the time it was prone to such meltdowns.

Why is it iconic?

Although I’ve alluded to the importance of discipline above I am not going to go completely PC on you! On another level this is a miraculous picture of an absolute peach of a punch, an incident we have seen replicated in rugby games since Webb Ellis and probably before that as well in the various hybrid games that existed around the world.

Yes it’s wrong and Haouas rightly copped a red card but in a sport of huge bone breaking, tendon ripping collisions and much more gratuitous cynical violence we retain a certain tolerance for the good old fashioned ‘honest’ punch. Of course officially we must condemn it and punish the offender but the thrower of a punch rarely becomes public enemy number one – Haouas got a modest three-week ban – although he will certainly have received an ear bashing from his coach.

Ultimately though rugby fans tend to think the occasional punch is more preferable to eye gouging, maiming prone bodies clearing them out, deliberate or reckless high tackles to the head, accidentally on purpose kicking people where it hurts in dark corners of rucks. There is just a hint of the ‘honourable’ when you get man on man fisticuffs, out in the open for all to see.

And there is almost a comic element here as well, if you asked a cartoonist to depict a rugby punch up this would do very nicely. Ritchie’s surprised look and the squashed nose. Note also the practiced poise to Haouas and his textbook clenched fist that suggests its probably not the first time he has thrown such a punch, on or off the field. The Montpellier prop, the son of Algerian immigrants, had a tough deprived early life and was no stranger to the Montpellier police.

Finally this picture talks eloquently for the power of the still image. I watched the entire incident live – and its various replays – and the real time TV pictures suggested a mere glancing blow until they employed the super slo-mo. In fact from one angle it looked like the French prop had missed altogether. Not so, with Getty’s staffer Dave Rogers tracking the entire melee he skilfully anticipates what’s going on and captures the exact moment – and pain – of impact.

Footnote: Edwards went to work along with head coach Fabien Galthie, who is also a hard line stickler for good discipline, and the result, ultimately, was their first Grand Slam in twelve years earlier this year. Yes they have a once in a generation group of players but at the elite level that counts for little without a degree of discipline.