To me the big tell tale sign of France being clueless was when they were in their own 22 and told to use it and NOBODY even attempted to take the readily available ball that wasn't being contested. It's pretty much the most pointless penalty it is possible to give.
Oh absolutely. France has almost entirely, literally beaten England and Italy off pure talent. We're constantly looking for individual matchups, the personal exploit, hero ball. And we actually manage some nice plays off that, solely because of the talent.
I'm not in the right place to say something like the following because I'm French myself, but here goes still: if France could be coached by a real hard man with some simple but
CLEAR tactics to follow, I'm not going to say they'd be magical but they'd really be a force to be reckoned with, that much is clear.
Just look at the dramatic change Ireland's gone through: organized, structured, and consistent the whole 80min (since the coaching change)
A guy like Doussain playing a fairly shhitty first half probably gets spoken to by Saint-André at HT in the locker room like: "listen, you were too slow, you're gonna have to up your game....". That's it. Gatland provokes his players, he's a father figure, authority personified, the patriarch, the mafia boss...he threatens to not play his guys if they screw up.
If you watch the last few games, that's ALL we do. Individual solutions, only the defense has chemistry. My bet right now is we're actually going to win the next two the same way. Almost purely off raw talent....
Look at England: anytime somebody makes a World XV or even a 6N XV, they've got 1 guy maybe 2 appearing on the list. And they're the best side in Europe statistically since the Lancaster era.
eeeeehhhh....................*siiiiiiiiiiiiiiighhhhh*
