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2024 Guinness Six Nations
What is wrong with French Rugby?
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<blockquote data-quote="barthelemy" data-source="post: 934699" data-attributes="member: 56370"><p>You are correct on most of your points.</p><p></p><p>The french rugby did not enter in the profesionalism era in the best way. Already, when the clubs became profesionals at the end of the 90s, there was a war between the union and the clubs and since then the dialog is very hard, it is a constant fight to have the players training and playing for the french team, the clubs are paying the players and they do not care much about the french team, even more with their arrogant top 14 championship, labelling themselves during long time as "the best championship in the world"</p><p></p><p>The french team was still quite good until 2005 or a bit after, still competitive because countries like Irland, wales or scotland took a bit of time to roll out profesionalism but once they did it, the french team did not stop to go down and to lose regurlarly against teams we were always (or often if you prefer, would not like to frustrate anybody <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" />) winning against before (Scotland, Wales...). Like the french clubs who were winning the european cups quite easily during the first years of 2000. Today it is much less the case and teams/franchise from Wales or Scotland are now largely competitive against french club</p><p></p><p>The causes of this failure of the french rugby team are numerous but the TOP14 is the main one (and more largely the inability of the union and the clubs to have a civilized and adult discussion about the French team), it is a very closed and self sufficient championship where money is flowing quite a lot and where a lot of foreign players are coming and where the game is much slower compare to the game played in other championship. It has no pressure to change its way of exisitng and playing as long as the money is coming in. It has no reason to push itself from more profesional training as long as the money is here. It has no real pressure to have homegrown players or to promote french players (and to prepare them for the pace of the international rugby). It has no pressure to have less scrum episod that last forever.</p><p></p><p>There are other things obviously, I think the "French Flair" and a certain arrogance did not help the french rugby who was thinking lazy in 2000, that the french flair would always save the country at one point forgetting to train properly at the same time, when other countries were already preparing themselves for the next step of profesionalism</p><p></p><p>I'm positive like you for the future generation (our U20 are quite competitive for example) because there have been slow but important changes : Training has changed at young age in France, the attitudes and stamina are so much better today, ,just look at our U20, they have the basics right, French players quotas have increased (Jiffs) so more competition and an obligation for the clubs to bring up to speed french talent, The latest agreement between the clubs and the union have increased the list of "protected" french players (who cannot play aboive a certain number of matches during the year. Guys like Dupont, Ntamack, Penaud, Bamba (and a big group of U20 who will hit the french A team soon like Carbonnel or Joseph) can only do better than the poor lot we have since 10 years.</p><p></p><p>But until we have the top14, I fear that there will be a constatn issue with clubs killing players by making them play too muhc matches during the year. Philippe Saint Andre had a very intersting interview about this, he explained that he started with some encouraging young players (Fofana and some other guys) in the few first matches he coached but after 2-3 years these guys were just burned becasue they were playing constantly top14 matches with clubs having no regards for the long term player health or stamina. the result was that the french team was ending up with players being the shadow of what theyr could have been or most of the time with no players at all and having too constantly play diffrent players because most of the main ones were injured or too burned to play for the french team. all of this does nto help any coach for consistency on hte long term. British and irish teams have much less this issue and plays wiht the same pool of players since several years, which is helping a lot their performance.</p><p></p><p>The worst hypocrite of the lot is the guy like Noves, who, when he was at toulouse was always spitting at the french team taking his players constantly and accepting the job of coaching the same team he was spitting on constantly. and then he did **** all.</p><p></p><p>Sure, Brunel is no good, I do not think any minute he is the right coach for the french team but since Lievremont, it is going from worse to worse, whatever the coach in charge. We need proper players, trained professionaly, being able to play 80 minutes withe same stamina, fully focused and with the good attitudes in tackling, in offloading. This is the base and then we can talk about coaching. I'm of the one who thinks we need a foreign coach to kick our asses a bit <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="barthelemy, post: 934699, member: 56370"] You are correct on most of your points. The french rugby did not enter in the profesionalism era in the best way. Already, when the clubs became profesionals at the end of the 90s, there was a war between the union and the clubs and since then the dialog is very hard, it is a constant fight to have the players training and playing for the french team, the clubs are paying the players and they do not care much about the french team, even more with their arrogant top 14 championship, labelling themselves during long time as "the best championship in the world" The french team was still quite good until 2005 or a bit after, still competitive because countries like Irland, wales or scotland took a bit of time to roll out profesionalism but once they did it, the french team did not stop to go down and to lose regurlarly against teams we were always (or often if you prefer, would not like to frustrate anybody :)) winning against before (Scotland, Wales...). Like the french clubs who were winning the european cups quite easily during the first years of 2000. Today it is much less the case and teams/franchise from Wales or Scotland are now largely competitive against french club The causes of this failure of the french rugby team are numerous but the TOP14 is the main one (and more largely the inability of the union and the clubs to have a civilized and adult discussion about the French team), it is a very closed and self sufficient championship where money is flowing quite a lot and where a lot of foreign players are coming and where the game is much slower compare to the game played in other championship. It has no pressure to change its way of exisitng and playing as long as the money is coming in. It has no reason to push itself from more profesional training as long as the money is here. It has no real pressure to have homegrown players or to promote french players (and to prepare them for the pace of the international rugby). It has no pressure to have less scrum episod that last forever. There are other things obviously, I think the "French Flair" and a certain arrogance did not help the french rugby who was thinking lazy in 2000, that the french flair would always save the country at one point forgetting to train properly at the same time, when other countries were already preparing themselves for the next step of profesionalism I'm positive like you for the future generation (our U20 are quite competitive for example) because there have been slow but important changes : Training has changed at young age in France, the attitudes and stamina are so much better today, ,just look at our U20, they have the basics right, French players quotas have increased (Jiffs) so more competition and an obligation for the clubs to bring up to speed french talent, The latest agreement between the clubs and the union have increased the list of "protected" french players (who cannot play aboive a certain number of matches during the year. Guys like Dupont, Ntamack, Penaud, Bamba (and a big group of U20 who will hit the french A team soon like Carbonnel or Joseph) can only do better than the poor lot we have since 10 years. But until we have the top14, I fear that there will be a constatn issue with clubs killing players by making them play too muhc matches during the year. Philippe Saint Andre had a very intersting interview about this, he explained that he started with some encouraging young players (Fofana and some other guys) in the few first matches he coached but after 2-3 years these guys were just burned becasue they were playing constantly top14 matches with clubs having no regards for the long term player health or stamina. the result was that the french team was ending up with players being the shadow of what theyr could have been or most of the time with no players at all and having too constantly play diffrent players because most of the main ones were injured or too burned to play for the french team. all of this does nto help any coach for consistency on hte long term. British and irish teams have much less this issue and plays wiht the same pool of players since several years, which is helping a lot their performance. The worst hypocrite of the lot is the guy like Noves, who, when he was at toulouse was always spitting at the french team taking his players constantly and accepting the job of coaching the same team he was spitting on constantly. and then he did **** all. Sure, Brunel is no good, I do not think any minute he is the right coach for the french team but since Lievremont, it is going from worse to worse, whatever the coach in charge. We need proper players, trained professionaly, being able to play 80 minutes withe same stamina, fully focused and with the good attitudes in tackling, in offloading. This is the base and then we can talk about coaching. I'm of the one who thinks we need a foreign coach to kick our asses a bit :) [/QUOTE]
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