2014 6 Nations: Wales vs France (Round 3)

[Rich Taff]

It was also broadcast to neutral England, Scotland and Ireland.

I thought Thomas Castaignede was incredibly biased in his comments, such a Welsh bias in all of them....

 

[Rumpi]

France is France. They can be defeat by Tonga in the group stage and the next game they can beat All Blacks.

Andrew Mehrtens quote: "The French are predictably unpredictable".

Normally that might be the case, however at the moment they are predictably poor. Playing the worst rugby i have ever seem from a French team. Just can't see what they are trying to do. They might have two wins but England played them off the pitch in Paris.

 

[jaffka]

I thought Thomas Castaignede was incredibly biased in his comments, such a Welsh bias in all of them....

who was in the match commentary team?

 

[Big Ewis]

Normally that might be the case, however at the moment they are predictably poor. Playing the worst rugby i have ever seem from a French team. Just can't see what they are trying to do. They might have two wins but England played them off the pitch in Paris.

Granted this is easily the worst France has been in the modern era, and possibly/probably since we turned good around the mid 50's. France has always had this roller-coaster sort of up-and-down factor in them but we still would beat a team convincingly. We simply don't have the world class chemistry and coaching that is required, it's just too obvious at this point. I've been the most patient fan, with each loss I thought "oh well at least this wasn't too bad, and that was alright" but it's all down to coaching now. Do we have the players ? Hell yeah.
Man I'm dying for a real Rugby technician to take over, what a fkn waste of talent...but we did show some very good elements against England though, that can't be just barred out.

 

[j'nuh]

Warburton (motm for me, not sure why Jenkins got it), Webb, Roberts and North really stood out today. Some big games from some of the under-fire players.

I've argued that the pace that Phillips sets for Wales just isn't good enough. His passes are slow. His delivery is slow. He has physicality and a long box kick, but that's all he's useful for imo. For all the flak Webb gets, I hope some of the members on here will be happy to admit that his performance is a step up from anything we've seen from Phillips in a long time. Fast delivery. Changed up the pace of the game. Made some lovely flatter passes. There was variety in his game, and he was far less predictable than Phillips. The biggest piece of evidence I have is how well he brought Roberts into the game. Chuck a ball to Roberts so that he has 5m to run before taking the hit, and you get nowhere. Give Roberts a flatter pass to run onto, and you saw the results today.

I don't agree with the train of thought that France are a bad team, they have excellent players in a lot of positions. PSA just has to go. To be honest, I'm not sure why he didn't get the sack last Six Nations.

What the heck is wrong with France and their half-backs though? Doussain was absolutely shocking today, which follows on from Machenaud being poor for the last year, and Michalak has been terrible barring one autumn, and Plisson isn't turning heads either. When is Parra back? Whatever happened to Trinh-duc (don't follow French rugby)?

 

[siochain]

Surly all is forgive for Alan Roland in wales after that.

 

[Rumpi]

Granted this is easily the worst France has been in the modern era, and possibly/probably since we turned good around the mid 50's. France has always had this roller-coaster sort of up-and-down factor in them but we still would beat a team convincingly. We simply don't have the world class chemistry and coaching that is required, it's just too obvious at this point. I've been the most patient fan, with each loss I thought "oh well at least this wasn't too bad, and that was alright" but it's all down to coaching now. Do we have the players ? Hell yeah.
Man I'm dying for a real Rugby technician to take over, what a fkn waste of talent...but we did show some very good elements against England though, that can't be just barred out.

The good thing is you have some serious players, so if you did get a good manager in, he could potentially turn it around quite quickly but the FFR seem loyal to a fault to their terrible choices as manager.

 

[Rumpi]

Warburton (motm for me, not sure why Jenkins got it), Webb, Roberts and North really stood out today. Some big games from some of the under-fire players.

I've argued that the pace that Phillips sets for Wales just isn't good enough. His passes are slow. His delivery is slow. He has physicality and a long box kick, but that's all he's useful for imo. For all the flak Webb gets, I hope some of the members on here will be happy to admit that his performance is a step up from anything we've seen from Phillips in a long time. Fast delivery. Changed up the pace of the game. Made some lovely flatter passes. There was variety in his game, and he was far less predictable than Phillips. The biggest piece of evidence I have is how well he brought Roberts into the game. Chuck a ball to Roberts so that he has 5m to run before taking the hit, and you get nowhere. Give Roberts a flatter pass to run onto, and you saw the results today.

I don't agree with the train of thought that France are a bad team, they have excellent players in a lot of positions. PSA just has to go. To be honest, I'm not sure why he didn't get the sack last Six Nations.

What the heck is wrong with France and their half-backs though? Doussain was absolutely shocking today, which follows on from Machenaud being poor for the last year, and Michalak has been terrible barring one autumn, and Plisson isn't turning heads either. When is Parra back? Whatever happened to Trinh-duc (don't follow French rugby)?

They're not a bad team. Plenty of good players it's just that They're playing awful awful rugby.

 

[jaffka]

Didn't France try the more structured approach under Bernard Laporte and it was demanded of his successor to play with more 'Gallic Flair'?

I do agree though, that with the talent pool available to France, they should be doing much better.

That though is one of the great mysteries of the world

 

[Big Ewis]

it's amazing to think PSA will probably be our coach for the 2015 RWC, and we can't win a World Cup playing this way...we can resist for a while, because of the talent alone, but then we'll likely lose in the 1/2 F or even 1/4 F or smt when we deserve better.
All these good players and all this effort channeled in the wrong direction...all this time wasted, and accumulated bad record. There's got to be smt we're not seeing, he must have connections or smt this PSA fellow...not that he doesn't care about the XV de France of course, just that he's incompetent and still has the job.

I was willing to buy that the matches vs England and Italy were a work in progress, and saw some things that I liked, but I thought we'd see a better French side tonight since this is all gradual progression, and we see one that repeats the same mistakes. We're so obviously a dysfunctional machine atm, how else could we explain good results with bad phases in the game, winning matches while not playing convincingly the whole way ?...we're a total roller-coaster. A shhitty 1st half against Italy, same thing here. We only start getting into rhythm in that 2nd half and we're not nearly fluid enough to use all that potential.

Picamoles carrying like an ogre, for what ? Isolated, we lose the ball eventually. All our backs win their matchups and beat defenders; and to be fair we really could have scored a couple of times there; but the point is our backs don't have the chemistry yet. All of a sudden a very promising Doussain seems a level below test match level (even though he had that really good game in NZ for e.g. in test 3) and Machenaud injects way more pace into the game.
Plisson is good but he's not a miracle no. 10, he's shown good elements for such a youngster but needs time to settle in.

All good components, one big dysfunctional machine.

 

[Big Ewis]

Just check this out:




The statlines I've highlighted in blue are so typical for France:
- we literally made more than twice as many passes as Wales did
- beat 23 defenders to their 9
- almost ran twice as many meters ball in hand.

And we lost by 21 points. So typically, typically PSA-era French. Just a caricature. Can't finish those plays off, can't conclude, can't take advantage of huge breaks.

Wales looked mediocre/medium tonight and they beat us eaaaasily. And we couldn't score one single try, despite all those opportunities, reflected on the stats there...
so typical !!

 

[Mumbles119]

View attachment 2729

An obvious exercise to do is if you covered the team names and scores. Showed it around and asked people which team they thought won?

 

[smartcooky]

Didn't France try the more structured approach under Bernard Laporte and it was demanded of his successor to play with more 'Gallic Flair'?

I do agree though, that with the talent pool available to France, they should be doing much better.

That though is one of the great mysteries of the world

Need I say it! With the huge number of non-France eligible players in the Top 14, the actual talent pool is not as big as it seems. One estimate I read recently is that around 45 percent of the approximately 620 players in Top 14 are not France eligible. That's roughly 280 players. Even worse, the foreigners are overrepresented in many of the key areas of the game; fly-half, No. 8, Prop.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/ru...4-will-hurt-France-on-the-national-stage.html

How many of the France team that played in this match are genuine regular starters for their Top 14 club?

 

[Ragey Erasmus]

Surly all is forgive for Alan Roland in wales after that.

No chance. Once there is a chip on a Welshmans shoulder, it stays there.

 

[dullonien]

Just check this out:

View attachment 2729


The statlines I've highlighted in blue are so typical for France:
- we literally made more than twice as many passes as Wales did
- beat 23 defenders to their 9
- almost ran twice as many meters ball in hand.

And we lost by 21 points. So typically, typically PSA-era French. Just a caricature. Can't finish those plays off, can't conclude, can't take advantage of huge breaks.

Wales looked mediocre/medium tonight and they beat us eaaaasily. And we couldn't score one single try, despite all those opportunities, reflected on the stats there...
so typical !!

There were a couple of breaks which should have resulted in try's. However what the stats alone don't reveal is that many of those metres run, or tackles beaten, or even breaks were either done behind the advantage line, or deep in their own half. The majority of the time, Wales had a cover defence in place and still knocked France back which resulted in the 23 turnovers conceded.

 

[goodNumber10]

Just check this out:

View attachment 2729


The statlines I've highlighted in blue are so typical for France:
- we literally made more than twice as many passes as Wales did
- beat 23 defenders to their 9
- almost ran twice as many meters ball in hand.

And we lost by 21 points. So typically, typically PSA-era French. Just a caricature. Can't finish those plays off, can't conclude, can't take advantage of huge breaks.

Wales looked mediocre/medium tonight and they beat us eaaaasily. And we couldn't score one single try, despite all those opportunities, reflected on the stats there...
so typical !!

Those stats are fine and tell you a lot about the game, but the thing that it doesn't tell you is the quality of those tackles and the possession.

France frequently let Wales over the gain line with a tackle line that didn't advance, they waited for wales to come to them. So they may have ahigher % but the tackles were less effective. Whereas Wales hustled, came off their line with a high line speed and swarmed the ball in clusters, so while there were missed tackles they were all deep over the advantage line and allowed Wales a second bite of the cherry if a tackle was slipped.

In attack their was nothing around the A channel, it all went to C straight away. It was like they thought they'd be able to rip North apart but when that didn't work they just had no plan B and carried on moving it wide.

They needed to narrow the welsh defence with pick and goes and you saw in the first half that when they punched the fringes they saw some return for it - Mas break for example.

They should have gone tight, box kicked onto Williams and then waited for wales to kick to them.

PSA has actually taken them backwards from Lievremont if that was even possible, and France is really really missing Morgan Parra.

 

[Patchey]

Still in shock from Alan Rolland's performance. If I didn't already know he was cr*p I'd say he's still trying to say sorry for *that* red card.

 

[SelimNiai]

Was a very impressive performance that proves the adage that "Wales are rarely s***e 2 6N games in a row". We defended very well, signalling our intent from the first French possession. All the guys put in a shift in the physical stuff.

Warbs was my, and many others, MOM, thought he was immense, constantly harassing the French at ruck time and deserved the try. Thought Webb had a game that justified his selection and in defence we didnt lose out too much physically with him there rather than Phillips. Roberts and North had big games, kept Fofana quiet and marshalled that big Basteraud well.

However with North at 13 we do lose out on the wing. Liam Williams brings a lot of effort without much productivity. He hustled around and blew his chance for a run (when he couldnt collect that excellent offload from Charteris) and for the 45628th time; we need Biggar at 10.

 

[Bluemoon]

I think the Welsh pack has to be given a lot of credit. They went from a tired and clumsy performance in Ire to an intense performance against a decent French pack. As the Ire game show, you stop a teams go forward and back lines tend to stutter. Webb looked to move the game quicker and this bought time for Priestland to get the backs moving. I think Biggar would be a better option at 10. I thought Ball also put in a decent performance.

I am seriously worried about North's defence at 13. I thought at times he was beaten far to easily, as he is used to having the touchline to defend with. It's something I hope is worked on before the next game. With out Jonathan Davies Wales really don't look all that creative or much less likely to break defensive lines. I didn't really see much of Cuthbert or Williams in attack, but this may have been because they were holding their positions rigidly.

We really have become the bogey team for France of late. I wonder which France will turn up in the next round??

 

[FrenchFan]

Need I say it! With the huge number of non-France eligible players in the Top 14, the actual talent pool is not as big as it seems. One estimate I read recently is that around 45 percent of the approximately 620 players in Top 14 are not France eligible. That's roughly 280 players. Even worse, the foreigners are overrepresented in many of the key areas of the game; fly-half, No. 8, Prop.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/ru...4-will-hurt-France-on-the-national-stage.html

How many of the France team that played in this match are genuine regular starters for their Top 14 club?

all of them. Even Plisson is getting a regular start ahead of Morne Steyn. if you watched the Top14 you would know that. Don't give us the same old broken record again.