Edwards confident France will be ready if game goes ahead

FRANCE will find out today if their match against Scotland in Paris will go ahead as planned on Sunday and Shaun Edwards is confident they will be ready to play, despite the disruption caused by a Covid outbreak. The English defence guru plotting a Gallic title triumph in this Six Nations has managed to stay virus-free while head coach Fabien Galthie, two of his assistants and 11 French players are isolating after testing positive. Tournament officials may decide that the Stade de France fixture against Gregor Townsend’s Scots has to be postponed by six or seven days, but the hosts are gearing up for the all-clear, despite the inconvenience of stringent training restrictions. All the latest test results came back yesterday and, speaking to Sportsmail from the France HQ at Marcoussis, Edwards (right) quipped: ‘We’ve had a positive day. Well… that’s probably a bad way to put it I suppose! We’ve had a good day anyway. We’re getting ready for a Test match on Sunday. ‘Yesterday was difficult and a bit of a shock, seeing lads who wanted to play being told they have to leave and isolate. But we have to put that behind us and get on with it. ‘The new lads have mixed in well. We had a clarity session — walkthroughs and jog-throughs without a ball — which was quite humorous. It was like a scene from Mike Bassett, England Manager!I always think that if there’s a bit of difficulty that you have to overcome, that makes any potential success so much sweeter.’ Edwards was adamant that France are taking all precautions to contain the outbreak in their ranks. They have avoided any contact or close proximity in training. They have been eating

alone in their rooms and doing analysis sessions outside. Galthie’s enforced rotation policy during the Autumn Nations Cup has proved beneficial now. ‘It’s fortunate that, in the autumn, we almost got used to these kind of weeks, with all the changes,’ said Edwards. ‘It’s not new to us, to have such mass changes. The guys who fitted in during the autumn know our systems. They understand what we want from them.’ Scotland prop Zander Fagerson was shown a red card in his side’s defeat against Wales at Murrayfield for making contact with an opponent’s head at a ruck, following a similar incident which saw veteran Ireland flanker Peter O’Mahony sent off against the Welsh six days earlier. There were five dismissals in the English Premiership last weekend amid an ongoing attempt to crack down on head injuries. But Edwards expressed qualified concern about the zero-tolerance approach. ‘Players are getting a lot of stick at the moment and I think it’s unfair,’ he said. ‘People are saying: “they can’t do this”, “they can’t do that”, but what’s needed is some clarity about where the target area is — not just where it isn’t. ‘We are trying to adapt tackle techniques, but there are scenarios in games when I think: “Where is the sweet spot there, to tackle someone? Can someone please explain that?”. ‘It is easy to say where you can’t tackle, but where can you tackle and clean (out, at rucks)? But it is not my job to make those decisions. My job is to make sure that our players don’t get sent off.’