David Ferguson: Les ‘Brats’ may yet have own way in one-off game

AS motivational talks go, Marc Lievremont’s discourse with his French players at the start of the biggest week in most of their lives definitely falls into the bizarre category.

The former France back row has not had his problems to seek since taking the helm after the 2007 World Cup, and so it continues, with him lambasting the players as “spoilt brats” after they had defied his instruction not to go out in Auckland after Saturday’s 9-8 semi-final win over Wales.

“Undisciplined, disobedient, sometimes selfish,” he described them as to their faces on Sunday. “Always complaining, always whingeing. And it’s been like this for four years. It seems to be our way of functioning.”

He added: “I also told them I have a lot of affection for them, but it is a shame they don’t look after themselves. We are in the final and we have to believe in this destiny. The problem is we are not world champions yet; we’re only in the final. And this reminds me of 1999. In ‘99 we spent four days celebrating our semi-final win. We didn’t prepare properly and I don’t want us to relive this same thing.”

Lievremont can be an oddball character, which I am sure is a prerequisite for the job of France coach, and even his own press corps had fun mimicking his moustache last week. But there is no mistaking a strong, all-consuming desire in him to see France at the top of the pile before he bows out next week whatever the outcome.

Ordinarily, his strong words could be seen as perfectly weighted to shake a side still to perform anywhere near their best out of their slumber, were it not for the fact that he has been similarly critical throughout the tournament. France must be one of the poorest performing sides yet to reach a World Cup final, although it was only four years ago when England reached the Paris denouement almost without a coach, senior players having taken over much of the leadership, sidelining Brian Ashton, after well-documented fall-outs through a stuttering campaign.

It could almost be an argument for dispensing with a coach, but England did not win then and France are unlikely to win now. New Zealand coach Graham Henry was an altogether more relaxed character when he spoke of how his coaches and senior players had dissected previous campaigns in an effort to understand the phenomenon of peaking between World Cups and going off the boil during it. The result was a realisation that World Cups are not about consistency, as with league championships, but being able to produce your best in one-off games.

The ‘one-off-ness’ alters the psyche and can lift a player into another dimension, one which we see plainly in Calcutta Cup encounters while tormenting ourselves over why the performance drops off when Scotland play Italy.

The All Blacks are the most consistent side in world rugby, with an incredible win ratio of 75 per cent – almost the same against France – from a total of 483 Test matches. They have built well in this tournament without hitting peak performance from one to 15 in the same game. They even lost the coin toss to decide who wears their home strip in Sunday’s final, but will still sport black, the French giving up their right to force the Blacks to play in white in a sporting gesture welcomed in New Zealand.

Some are pointing to the psychology already, suggesting the French are merely happy to be in the final and expect no more, but that is to ignore the point raised by Henry – this is a one-off. And that is when France are at their most dangerous. Their scrum and lineout dominated the Welsh, but they benefited hugely from Wales losing tighthead prop Adam Jones and openside flanker Sam Warburton – their two most important forwards – and still only scraped home by a point. Their set-piece will not enjoy the same success this weekend.

Their backs have struggled to fire as an attacking division throughout the tournament, coughing up ball regularly and showing about as much cohesion going forward as a government coalition. And their discipline and commitment appears to be all over the place.

It would be worth taking a punt on the biggest winning margin in a World Cup Final yet. The French were on the receiving end of the previous two one-sided affairs, when the All Blacks claimed the first trophy in Eden Park in 1987, with a 29-9 triumph, and when the Wallabies improved on that in 1999 with a 35-12 win in Cardiff, a French side including Lievremont having left their pizzazz somewhere in the celebrations of an admittedly stunning semi-final defeat of the All Blacks. Everything points in that direction. But this is France and Lievremont knows the French psyche as well as any Gallic shrugger. He knows they like to be written off and his words might just be designed, again to evoke a fiery French riposte. They have lost to Italy and Tonga this year already, and the All Blacks in their pool match convincingly, but beaten Ireland, England and Wales, twice, without revealing the French élan we know still lurks in a side boasting the qualities of backs Morgan Parra, Dimitri Yachvili, Maximes Medard and Mermoz, Vincent Clerc and Cedric Heymans, and Thierry Dusautoir, Imanol Harinordoquy, Fulgence Ouedraogo and Louis Picamoles up front.

Does this side need a coach that believes in them? If ever a team can manage without one it may be France and, if Les Bleus do rise up in Sunday’s ‘one-off’ Test, it will certainly make for a cracking final the tournament is crying out for, but still one cannot see past the men in black and an Eden Park finale where the word destiny has a more genuine ring to it.