Fear of the end drives Nallet on

THE fear of being possibly just 80 minutes away from the end of his World Cup career is just the motivation veteran France lock Lionel Nallet needs to take into Saturday’s quarter-final against England.

While the 35-year-old Nallet is angry at how poorly he played in the shocking 19-14 defeat to Tonga last week, it made him realise just what may happen if the team puts in a similarly-bad performance against England at Eden Park on Saturday. “It’s my last World Cup, I’m 35. I won’t experience this again,” said Nallet. “I’m telling myself ‘What on earth have I been doing?’ These are perhaps my last 80 minutes in the French jersey.”

Nallet, a former France captain, hopes his 68th cap is not his last, and that he will get two more matches at Eden Park – the semi-finals and final are both at the Auckland venue. France will have to improve considerably before that can happen, though. There were no redeeming facets of their shock defeat against Tonga, and Nallet knows the overall commitment has to be better against England. “Everyone has to look at themselves. We have a tendency to look for excuses,” Nallet said. “The message I want to get across to the players is: ‘Stop looking for excuses.”’

With 11 years of international experience to draw upon, including eight tests against England over the years, Nallet knows he should be leading by example at the World Cup – something he admits he failed to do against Tonga. “Yes, I am upset. It’s more against myself, I’m the one on the field, I’m the one who’s playing,” Nallet said. “I have looked at my performance on the video, that wasn’t me. I’m asked to be a fighter, to get stuck in, and I didn’t do that.”

Until Saturday’s awful performance against Tonga, most of the criticism had been aimed at beleaguered coach Marc Lievremont, rather than at the players, and Nallet thinks that has been unfair. The media “have opened the doors for us to put all the blame on Marc (Lievremont), that would be easy. That’s not it,” he said. Nallet said the players had to take responsibility for their actions. “In a way I’m the senior citizen of the team, and if I’m not capable of doing it then it’s tough for others to. That’s why I’m angry with myself.”

Scrum-half Dimitri Yachvili also insisted France have moved on from their debacle against Tonga. He said: “We talked a lot together this week. We didn’t train for three months to stop at the quarter-final. It’s the quarter-final of the World Cup and maybe we will never play again in the quarter-final of the World Cup. That’s the motivation.”