XV of France – “Bogne or Crève!” : the Blues ready to do anything to avoid a white tour in New Zealand

Hamilton, south of Auckland, is a flat city, erased, that a brutal town planning has sentenced anonymity. There is a main artery and, on each side, cubic buildings, without charm, ageless. Architecture? Functional, will say the most generous. Others will evoke, at half voice, a vaguely Soviet aesthetic. Which is also a serious insult for the ex-USSR. There are good bars there, fast foods, shop windows, signs with the lights that flash. But just spend a weekend in Hamilton to realize that this decorum often sounds like a promise not kept …

It is therefore here, in this pale corner of New Zealand, that the XV of France is preparing to compete in the last test of its summer tour. Test… The word is well chosen, note … It is a test of endurance, dignity, pride, survival perhaps. De facto, the All Blacks are already leading 2-0. Series won. Curtain. Basta. And yet, after the wide defeat of Wellington (43-17), the Habs tried a funny gambit to restore a little color to the rout. We heard, in the city of the wind: “On the second half, we competed: there was even a draw, 14-14.”

This is rarely a good sign, when a team begins to cut a match to keep only the digital slices. And this way of invoking a partial to hide the total, to brandish dummy equality as a counterweight to a consumed defeat, is this unconscious strategy of vanquished which, unable to deny their fall, try to dress it with any verbal dignity.

In Hamilton, return to plan

However, Gaël Fickou and his colleagues now want to prove something, on this last match. Prove that they are still there. That they did not cross the planet to play the sparring parties, the typing bags. And that they can, as of tomorrow, “Break the neck of the black giant”. Pretty formula, isn’t it? Here, we immediately think of Bust Douglas against Mike Tyson, Ulysses against Cyclops, David against Goliath. Except that in New Zealand, David drags a suitcase full of ten months of Top 14, champions cup, window nights without windows, video meetings that end up no more and muscle awakenings wedged at 6:30 am. Not easy to draw a sling when you have cramps in the eyebrows.

But a victory, then? It is not reasonable, of course. It’s not rational, either. To believe it is however human and, just to avoid ruminating the echo of Kapa O Pango and the severe squash of Ardie Savea on a long journey of thirty hours, the Tricolores must bang strong, play dirty if necessary and fuck the myths. Quite suffered. You have to bite, you have to defeat and for that, they even have a plan, the buggers. Nothing foufou, huh. Just the worthy copy-pasted of what had worked rather well in Dunedin, during the first test (31-27). No Kamikazes raised at La Barré. Winter game, real, heavy. Pumping at the bottom of the field, ferocious penetrating mauls and return to density. We want Guillard, Fischer, Villière. Butchers, bleeders, bistro brutes. And then, we also want aura. Him ? It is certainly all in elbows and filaments; He has arms like chopsticks and he is so long that we wonder how he does not end his games crushed by the kilos of others. But Bibi’s younger son has a “superpirror”, as Galkié says. He rises. It floats. And it can, almost alone, adjust the key, stammering and more, of the previous test.

Do the Habs still have petrol?

NOW ? You have to spit in the pognes and raise your tone, young people. You have to play hard and count, too, a little on the others. As such, the staff of the Blues obviously decided to put into practice lobbying which had perhaps cost him “his” World Cup, two years earlier. On the northern island, clips recently circulated between the tricolor kommandantur and the arbitral body. This is because after the second test, our Pilars had big on the potato.

To try to understand the dismay of Baptiste Erdocio and Paul Mallez, we too saw the images. Schoolly. Conscientiously. And if we still do not understand anything at the mysteries of the closed melee, we have noted that the right -handers of the Blacks, Fletcher Newell and Pasilio Tosi, cheat on each of them as a business school. Questionable links, equivocal support. In Wellington, Christophe Ridley, however, let go. This does not mean that Angus Gardner, as an impeccable reminder during the last Ireland-France (27-42), will be equally mild on Saturday evening vis-à-vis the New Zealand right-handers.

Because you have to hang on to something, right? And faced with what New Zealand will offer better this weekend, the XV of France must activate motivation levers in the ability to make him both forget his overhaul and the talent of the other. Here, the fact that the All Blacks no longer watch the Blues-the central theme of the New Zealand press has shot this week around the bundle of Springboks and the Rugby Championship-can constitute an energy detonator, even a reason of revenge. In such circumstances, the mantra of “alone against all” can also prove to be relevant and, upstream of the last test, there are some to regret that Justin Marshall, the Ayatollah of the beginnings, has broken down from another preaching, that relating to the “disrespect” of the French who had the merit of shaking the Blues, in Dunedin.

Basically, that would be the hardest. The idea that these three tests might have been useless

But to think about it, was “Marshie” really wrong? You have seen the Wellington match like me. You have seen as Pierre-Louis Barassi-the only holder of the last 6 nations tournament to have played this second test-, from his first balls, tormented the All Blacks. You saw that that evening, there was at “PL”, injured and forfeited this weekend, something sharper, more anchored and which gave birth to fleeting concern among all black. The seer to do, so we surprised to wander, to grow a regret, to imagine something else. Another team, with fifteen premiums, fourteen guys like him. A denser presence, a match that would have a weight, a memory. There ? We do not know, we no longer know and before the keel, still floats this uncertainty between fatigue and resignation, between courage and blindness. This match in Hamilton may be a start. Maybe a revolt. Or none of that. Just one more match in a ultimately forgettable tour. And basically, that would be the hardest. The idea that these three tests might have been useless. Nothing but a long-haul flight, three defeats and regrets …