Sloth-like and ill-disciplined French forgot to bring blistering line speed
Sunday was a chastening experience for French fans and for pundits like me who had pretty much guaranteed that, if nothing else, Les Bleus would bring aggressive defence and blistering line speed to Murrayfield. Instead they brought next to nothing, playing in patches, ill disciplined, tactically naive and totally unable to get out of the hole they dug for themselves with two cards, one yellow, one red.
France were lucky not to finish the game with 13 players because as early as the fifth minute of this match Grant Gilchrist was upended in a two-man tackle, landing on his head/neck and it should have resulted in red.
Instead the referee flashed a yellow card at the wrong Frenchman with the first tackler, Francois Cros, going to the bin when it was the subsequent intervention of lock Paul Willemse that caused Gilchrist to land badly.
France were sloth-like in their lethargy and the half backs will never play so badly again. Antoine Dupont has been a revelation to date but on Sunday he simply unravelled. Within the space of a few first half minutes the scrummy fired a bullet at his skipper Charles Ollivon who inevitably knocked on. He tossed a pass to Jefferson Poirot who also fumbled before Dupont put everyone out of their misery by kicking directly into touch and gifting Scotland a lineout where he stood. Perhaps the best example of France’s go-slow movement was the winger Damian Penaud who loped back to collect a kick in the first half so slowly he almost allowed Blair Kinghorn to score as a result. What was he thinking?
But Scotland can only beat the team that turns up on the day and they did that with far more comfort than anyone might have guessed before kickoff, well, almost anyone. I asked one French journalist beforehand who would win and he didn’t hesitate.
“Scotland,” he snapped back. “We don’t have a good record at Murrayfield and we don’t like being favourites.”
Credit to Gregor Townsend, whose team found a way to win but only after abandoning his “fastest rugby” tactics and going back to basics.
You can understand Townsend’s reluctance to change tack because, in his first year in charge of the national squad (2017, post Six Nations), his running rugby resulted in Scotland winning four out of six matches while scoring an astonishing 27 tries in the process.
Sadly, the Six Nations proved a tougher nut to crack and, following the World Cup setback, Townsend has effectively done a tactical U-turn.
Against Ireland in Yokohama Scotland played as if their hair was on fire, making 180 passes and kicking the ball 27 times. Against France on Sunday, with less possession, they made 99 passes and 28 kicks.
The kick/pass ratio has dropped from a kick every 6.6 passes to a kick every 3.5 passes in a matter of months. This was a far more considered exhibition and, while Wales won’t be trembling in their boots, at least Scotland are able to play in more than one way, which is a step in the right direction. The change in tactics has been facilitated by two men, Pieter de Villiers and Steve Tandy, who have helped Scotland unearth new ways of getting (or keeping) a toehold in a Test match.
South African de Villiers has made Scotland’s set scrum an offensive weapon that ground out two straight arm penalties from the French. Its dominance over the piece was a kick in the teeth for a team that puts great store by its scrummaging. Mohamed Haouas was probably irked more by being second best to Rory Sutherland than he was by Jamie Ritchie’s antics just before he clocked the Scottish flanker to elicit that red card.
Incidentally, Ritchie was lucky to avoid the sin bin for blindsiding French hooker Julien Marchard and starting the whole fracas.
Whereas the Scotland of old viewed the set scrum as something to survive, a combination of coach de Villiers and the excellent form of props Sutherland and Zander Fagerson means that the Scots now view every scrum as a potential penalty.
The other key recruit has been Tandy, who has tightened up Scotland’s defence, although he won’t be happy about conceding that final try to a 14-man France. The former Ospreys coach knows more about Welsh rugby than most so he will expect a backlash from his countrymen… whenever and wherever the Wales/scotland game takes place.
“Scotland can only beat the team that turns up on the day and they did that with far more comfort than anyone might have guessed before kick off”