Six Nations: France v Italy Match Thread

FCIM

prawnsambo wrote: »

Watching the match last night, I felt that Shaggy was incredibly harsh on Italy. He couldn't find a good word to say about them and tbh, I was a bit disapppointed. They're not by any means the finished article, but they were able to defend their line very well, had a decent enough set-piece, showed very good ball handling skills and have some really impressive strike runners. Sebastian Negri really stood out for me, he'd be in the conversation for an Ireland cap imo.

The Italian commentary team on Dmax Italia was very critical of the way they (didn't) held their line. Their main hope seemed to come from certain players like Bellini and Negri and that the French started to look tired.

Out of interest, who is Shaggy?

GiftofGab

FCIM wrote: »

Anyway...

I wouldn't kick anyone out. I might look at having a promotion/relegation playoff between the bottom 6N team and the champions of the Rugby Europe Championship. It'd give the tier 2 teams something to aspire to. At the moment, it's a closed shop and I don't see why, as examples, Georgia and Romania who are serious about the sport shouldn't get an opportunity against a team which is about to get it's thirteenth wooden spoon in nineteen tournaments.

Its just down to money. Tblisi is not an attractive location for the powers of rugby and it wont generate as much money as Rome. If Germany were as good as Georgia, there would be no question that they would be playing in the Six Nations.

Bridge93

Georgia are nowhere near good enough for the 6N. If the idea is to strengthen the competition another whipping boy is not the answer. They can get themselves up for one off games against mostly second string tier one countries (and still get hammered regularly) but a whole competition is a different story. The rankings are irrelevant in every way.

They haven’t done nearly as much as Italy did to merit their inclusion 20 years ago. Let’s see how the progress they’ve made at lower level goes for a bit first. Same with Italy’s progress at lower levels

jammiedodgers

FCIM wrote: »

The Italian commentary team on Dmax Italia was very critical of the way they (didn't) held their line. Their main hope seemed to come from certain players like Bellini and Negri and that the French started to look tired.

Out of interest, who is Shaggy?

Shane Horgan

thebaz

Bridge93 wrote: »

Georgia are nowhere near good enough for the 6N. If the idea is to strengthen the competition another whipping boy is not the answer. They can get themselves up for one off games against mostly second string tier one countries (and still get hammered regularly) but a whole competition is a different story. The rankings are irrelevant in every way.

They haven’t done nearly as much as Italy did to merit their inclusion 20 years ago. Let’s see how the progress they’ve made at lower level goes for a bit first. Same with Italy’s progress at lower levels

well if they are so much better than Georgia let them play them anually , for a place in the 6 Nations and they might actually win a competive game , instead of never-ending losses that seam to have no consquences - but as someone else said earlier ther is a bigger agenda, not too many big wigs would be happy having to travel to Georgia or Bucharest instead of Rome, even if it would be samall risk , or heppen very rarely - I just think it would be good for lower end of 6 Nations

iroced

Akrasia wrote: »

France should be kicked out of the 6 nations, they're not taking it seriously, playing a random team every game for the last 5 years

A random team? You must not follow French rugby very close...

French rugby's going very bad. Add to that a complete lack of confidence and you get the current results. It's very simple in the end.

Now I've been hammering for about 10 years now what are the real problems of French rugby. It all became very clear in Lièvremont's second year (*). Unfortunately History has proven me right.

Hermy wrote: »

Didn't they do something similar under Lièvremont a few years back and only managed to get to the final of the World Cup?

Not really. But I get where you're coming from.

sydthebeat wrote: »

Yeah
Lievremont took something like 150 players into training camps before that world Cup. He hadn't a clue who his best team was.

That's bullsh*te. Lièvremont knew exactly what he was doing. Inner (everlasting) problems between the league and the federation weakened his position towards the players and this resulted in this strange WC though back then we were able to show some character and should have won the WC with a ref on the pitch in the final. That's History anyway.

stephen_n wrote: »

That World Cup final was probably one of the worst things to happen for French rugby. It papered over some very large cracks and has been an excuse for a lot of mediocrity since. France has a lot of talented players, but no clear direction or gameplan to use them. Picking players because they are the best is all well and good, but utterly useless if they don’t suit the game you want to play.

No. That's what you want to see from it. Everyone in France knew exactly the value we should give to this WC. But business is business...

And the gameplan had already died 2 years ago (*). So Lièvremont built a team with a strong character for a short-term "coup" to just get the result. A bit like Mourinho did with ManU last year: playing crap but winning 2 trophies in the end. Lièvremont explained why he failed to implement his gameplan and said what had to be done (*). No one listened to him (I mean the people in charge) and we got PSA who tried to make us play like early 90ies England 'cause in a way he did not have the choice. We all know the result. Then Novès tried something in between the 2 with some little adjustment for our international players but he needed time. Laporte did not give it to him and only seems interested in his own fraudulous business with his stooge Serge Simon and we're now playing with the worms in our own rugby grave. Brunel who I believe is a nice guy does not deserve that. But he got swindled by Bernie.


(*) If you want to understand France's current rugby, watch back the Ireland-France game from the 2009' 6N. We lost 30-21 in Dublin in a game where Lièvremont made us (try to) play the current high-intensity attacking rugby we see from the top sides. Our problem was we lacked efficiency and we ran out of gas after the hour mark. This pattern repeated and Lièvremont and many French rugby followers came to the conclusion that we needed a better preparation for our internationals. That implied major changes in our Top14.

A change in many ways. Less games to be played (just an example, when we got crushed by NZ in WC 2015, since the 2011 WC final, Dusautoir had played the equivalent of a full season more than McCaw - 'nugh said right?! -). Therefore a format change. Hopefully to bring a style of play change.

What happens in the Top14 now? Most teams play with the fear in their stomach to get relegated and compromise the future of their own club. To change that, we need to redistribute the levels of French rugby. We thought a reduced elite would bring more quality. On paper yes. In reality you get what I've just said, teams rather play not to lose instead of to win. With the flourishing business around Top14, clubs get more and more tempted to buy good foreign players than trust our own youngsters. 'Cause they need immediate results!

To change that, I think we need to enlarge top14 to e.g. a top20 with 2 seeded groups of 10 teams. More teams in the elite. less pressure to stay up. Cause there will be "in-between" clubs that will go up and down from 1 season to the other but they will budget for it. And over time they'll get the chance to grow bigger and become a more stable elite team (currently La Rochelle comes to mind but it's a rare exception). Others not working as good would have an opposite trend (e.g. Perpignan & Biarritz lately). That used to be the case. It sill is in a way but the opportunity for a smaller club to grow is reduced. We saw it with Oyonnax. Urios brought them up to HCup. But they immediately got relegated. They got promoted again but will certainly go directly down again. You may think that sounds similar to what I'm hoping for but the major difference is in my system I would hope that each time Oyonnax goes down they don't have to sell half the club not to disappear completely (I exaggerate but you get the idea and I can give you real examples: Béziers, Colomiers, Bourgoin, Montauban). Also, we've now reached a stage where you almost know the teams going down after 3-4 games. That's ridiculous.

Once we'd have done that, it'd be easier to control the amount of foreign players in our clubs and encourage the development of our yougsters.
This change of fomat would also give our internationals up to 2 extra months of recovery/preparation. The league & the federation should work together to reach some agreements (even financial) to improve not only our national side results but to establish some playing style "guidelines" (e.g. you can't teach a forward to go for the offload when he's playing for Les Bleus, it's too late, that's the role of the academies).
But that all demands some kinda revolution.


And hopefully, our insignificant win over Italy won't cloud this judgement that more and more people are getting to in France.