Present in England since Friday evening, the XV of France female is preparing to enter the competition, next Saturday against Italy. Joanna Grisez, one of the best players on the lawn last Saturday during the defeat in a friendly match against England (6-40), takes stock of the state of minds of the Blue.
First, how was your installation in England?
We arrived late Friday evening and had just time to swallow a little thing and go to bed. But the setting is superb, we are really well installed. On Saturday morning, we just did a little physics, a bicycle replacement, just to reactivate the organism and eliminate the route that was a bit long.
Precisely, did the five days of vacation, far from Marcoussis, allowed you to digest the defeat against the English in Mont-de-Marsan?
To digest and evacuate is a bit hard in such a short time. This defeat will be really digested when we return to the field, I think when we have matched and we have set up what we want. We really want to show something else.
Is the goal to use the three group games to find more collective benchmarks, especially offensively?
We need to review our way of attacking. No need to be a fine rugby connoisseur to see that what is a problem for us today is clearly the attack. We lack efficiency, we fail to know how to play in the right places. For the moment, it’s rough, we lose our balloons too quickly. We haven’t shown much, it’s even weak. We just need to play ball, to succeed in holding it, to go play in the right spaces and it will already be a good start.
Personally, you have shown yourself to your advantage during this friendly match against the English. Is it a satisfaction?
It is always hard to remain objective when you talk about yourself, especially since I inevitably take into account collective performance. Afterwards, it is true that until I have analyzed my match, I think I could hardly do much better with the little ball that I had. But, for me, it is impossible to satisfy myself when you take 40. I’m not going to put my head at the bottom of the bag. It’s not worth it. I prefer to be focused on the coming competition.
Do you not fear, with this heavy defeat, to have lost confidence?
Difficult to speak for the collective, I do not know exactly in what state of mind are all girls. In my opinion, it is still preferable to take 40 in a friendly match against one of the best world teams than to face a lower team. We now know what is missing, we know what is wrong. We also know that the bodies were a little tired after a long preparation. Afterwards, the English have not offered extraordinary things either. If we had not made so many mistakes, we would not have taken so many balls worn. We really need to be much less penalized and keep the ball a little more. Obviously, I’m not sure that we needed to take 40, but in any case, now, you have to use it to bounce back. It may be an evil for a good.
