Yes it was not only the fitness/conditioning of the French players which was questioned by Pat Sanderson, Shane Horgan and Will Greenwood but also PSA's selections of players not in their natural positions: not choosing a proper 10, choosing one of the best 12s in Fofana on the wing???!!! In Will Greenwood's word: "what are you doing????"
If PSA can stop faffing about and choose players in their proper positions then France can be a formidable team this Autumn and for the 6N.
that's not nearly the problem though. Our woes have almost nothing to do with positioning issues, alas, if it were that simple. Huget who played out of position at FB handled it like a pro for e.g., it's all the rest that is to be reviewed. Our guys played extremely hard during the last 6N, but not the right way. We looked clueless against Wales at home, and England on the road and lost both those matches by 10. We looked mediocre at best in Ireland, and we easily could have put more on Scotland but that was good overall. Italy stunned us, and we just didn't have enough time together, every other team had weeks to prepare, not us....never us
Playing hard is good, but again, we need to channel our potential in the right direction. We looked clueless last Feb. at times, and thank God for that Fofana try in Twickers, and Tuilagi can thank God himself they actually awarded that try of his own.
The thing is, in all our glorious decaying, we haven't been thrashed by anyone in any recent meeting since the RWC, if not for that disaster in test 2 NZ, but that was just the pinnacle of our current shyttiness, Michalak in all his marvel...I'll repeat that day, many teams would have beaten us. It was almost scary how little plan we had, we were just sort of......out there....playing ball for 80min....
So like I said, we haven't been destroyed by anyone all this time, which couldn't be said about many teams without a game plan. Another team would've been dismantled without a proper game plan, but solely because we have top players at basically every position, we managed to survive and hang in there based on talent alone. "We're running on empty" so to speak.
What a waaaaaaste !!.....what a waste........
We haven't beaten Wales, England or Ireland since the changes (post-RWC)...another loss in Italy, and of course the typical French underestimating in Argentina in 2012 when we lost that first test to Arg. B.
It really shows just how the FFR isn't taken seriously. A national side is sent to NZ without a gameplan and puts up a performance like test 2...
