Wales left rueing their wasted chance to bust French Slam
FOR the heavy antepost favourites to fall at the final hurdle in Paris next Saturday night, England will be required to do something they have never done before.
France have never failed to win a Six Nations’ Grand Slam decider at their Flying Saucer of a stadium, including two against England, in 2004 when Dimitri Yachvili virtually beat them off his own bat and again six years later under Thierry Dusautoir’s leadership.
Should the visitors go out of their way again this coming weekend to behave as perfect guests and make the Entente Cordiale a bit more so, their ancient rivals will end the longest gap between Slams since Charles de Gaulle last occupied the Elysees Palace more than half a century ago.
In the event of rather more recent history repeating itself and the French rejoicing at their first clean sweep for 12 long years, they will thank their lucky stars for the dirty trick the rugby gods played on Jonathan Davies during the final quarter of a nerve-wracking occasion in Cardiff.
A match which even the most loyal devotees of the Red Dragon fraternity feared they would lose by the length of the Boulevard Saint-Michel turned out to be very nearly the upset of the tournament. France got away with it because they did what champion teams do, win in spite of their performance.
Nobody, save perhaps those in the home camp, could have seen this coming. Even Wayne Pivac and his coterie of coaches must have had early doubts, squirming through their team’s habitual tendency to ensure every opponent a flying start.
It took them 63 seconds to give the French their first shot at goal and just another eight more to engineer the only try, an invitation issued by Liam Williams to see what his opposite number, Melvyn Jaminet, could do with an extravagantly loose kick.
Jaminet did enough for Anthony Jelonch to cross unopposed and yet in spite of such unwitting generosity, Wales got to work on their plan so effectively thereafter that they made opponents suitably puffed up pre-match as the best in the world look surprisingly ordinary.
On a night when the empty seat count amounted to more than 11,000, Wales played some of their smartest rugby for many a year. Those who understandably voted with their feet in protest at overpriced tickets and Friday night travel issues would have admired it from a distance.
The costly start suggested that, like Italy, Ireland and Scotland before them, Wales too would be caught in the glare of dazzling opponents. Instead they cut the supply lines, most notably from the hitherto supreme French lineout thanks in no small way to Seb Davies’ work as a saboteur at the tail.
The overall effect of reducing the voltage had a dimming effect on the French, so much so that their bobby dazzler-inchief, Antoine Dupont, failed to go the distance, substituted for the last ten minutes with the Slam dangling in the balance.
When Adam Beard and Will Rowlands weren’t pilfering precious possession or disrupting the mighty Paul Willemse at the front, Dan Biggar was running the game with the aura of a five-star general fortified by his own infallibility.
As an exhibition in the art of how to kick a rugby ball it deserves to live long in the memory. Short or long, high or low, Biggar hardly put a foot wrong in ensuring that France lost the aerial battle.
Nobody will ever know for certain but they might well have lost the war as well had Jonathan Davies taken that inside pass from Taulupe Faletau in the last quarter of a thrilling finale.
Biggar, as per usual, found his No.8 unmarked on the left touchline with a punt of pure precision. Faletau caught it without needing to check his stride, drew the nearest defender and gave Davies the ball some ten metres away from the line.
For once, Shaun Edwards’ renowned defensive system seemed beyond salvation with Jaminet the last man left to man the barricade. They survived because Davies dropped the pass, fumbling it to his right where Dupont could hardly believe his luck at being able to find touch instead of a Welsh touchdown.
To have seized the lead for the first time would have been no more than the underdogs deserved on a night when their front row conceded just the one solitary scrum penalty. High up in the coaches’ box, Fabien Galthie kept puffing his cheeks, as if he half-expected to see the Slam drifting off down the Taff at any minute.
The stay of execution turned out to be all France needed to reinforce their resistance. They did so to such an extent that the aspiring Slam-busters would never come that close again to a victory which would have played England and Ireland back into the title race overnight.
Biggar had ample cause to feel miserably shortchanged by a solitary bonus point, albeit the best one of the tournament hitherto. “I thought we were the better team,’’ he said, with justifiable pride. ‘“We had one or two big moments. We didn’t nail them and paid the price.’’
He made sure they kept believing for every second of what was left until time
ran out. When Jaminet hooked a long-distance attempt left of the posts, the home crowd, sensing that maybe their time was about to come, belted out a raucous version of Ar Hyd y Nos (All Through the Night).
When it came to seeing the game out, Jonathan Danty stood four-square at every breakdown, shutting every Welsh escape route. By then he had helped France avert their last crisis, when the English referee, Matt Carley, gave Wales an inexplicably long advantage before awarding them the penalty for one last chance to besiege the French line.
The pummelling came to nothing, the bespectacled Galthie kept puffing his cheeks until Jelonch put his coach, his team and his country out of their misery, hoofing the ball out of harm’s way in red-clock time. His act of mercy in relieving a nation’s anxiety prompted scenes of Gallic jubilation on the pitch as if France had won the World Cup.
A greater compliment to Wales would be hard to find, not that it will blind them to a fact of increasing concern; one try in two home matches, and that from a tighthead prop, Tomas Francis.