Nations Cup to end in farce as France select weakened squad for final

THE Autumn Nations Cup final was thrown into farce yesterday after France head coach Fabien Galthie unveiled a 31-man squad to face England containing just 121 caps.

What should have been the showpiece event of the autumn and a highly anticipated rematch of England’s only defeat of the year, 24-17 in Paris, is at risk of becoming a walkover for Eddie Jones’ team, who are on a roll of seven straight victories after their 24-13 win against Wales on Saturday.

France captain Charles Ollivon, star scrum-half Antoine Dupont and every other player who featured in that victory against England in February will be unavailable to Galthie on Sunday.

After a threat of legal action by the Top 14 clubs, the French Rugby Federation agreed that no player would feature in more than three games this autumn.

After Galthie selected his strongest team for the warm-up match against Wales, their final Six Nations game against Ireland and last weekend’s win away to Scotland, he is now without at least 25 leading players.

What remains is a mixture of second and third-string players.

Their starting pack against Italy on Saturday had just 13 caps between them.

Only two players in Galthie’s squad, prop Uini Atonio and full-back Brice Dulin, have more than 10 caps, and their total of 63 accounts for more than half of the France side’s caps.

By comparison, the England team who started against Wales had 807 caps, which was their most experienced ever.

After their 36-5 victory against Italy, Galthie explained that he was unwilling to mix and match his selections to save his best team for the final.

“At international level, it is necessary to switch completely. You cannot ask the players to come in, come out, come in, come out. It is too difficult for a player,” he said.

Perhaps it is fitting that a distinctly underwhelming tournament is almost guaranteed to finish on an anticlimax.

Thrown together to plug the gap in the autumn schedule left by the absence of the touring southern hemisphere teams, the Autumn Nations Cup was already blighted by the cancellation of all three of Fiji’s group fixtures because of Covid-19 outbreaks.

With attacking rugby almost completely absent because of the domination of defences and boxkicking, the standard of rugby has been woeful, which must have left Amazon Prime deflated by its first foray into rugby broadcasting. (© Daily Telegraph, London)