Six Nations preview: New French coach faces dilemma before tournament

THE QUALITY of Philippe Saint-André’s rugby pedigree is difficult to challenge. The new national coach was capped 69 times for his country, he scored 32 tries in the process.

This is a man who led France 34 times, most notably to historic back-to-back Test wins in New Zealand in 1994 and to the third place in the 1995 World Cup. He began his coaching career as player-manager with Gloucester and has since displayed managerial prowess on both sides of the Channel, winning the English championship with Sale and coming within an inch of domestic and European titles with Toulon in his first season.

Although Saint-André has the necessary credentials to take French rugby’s top job, the question remains, is le Goret (the Piglet) the man to lead his nation into a new era and even rid Les Bleus of their unenviable status of eternal World Cup bridesmaids?

Some of the answers may be found in the players and coaches who have left their mark on him. A French great in his own right, PSA shared his playing career with some of the true legends of Gallic rugby such as Serge Blanco, whom he names as a prime influence. As for the latter part of his international career, it is Thomas Castaignède, le petit prince, who had the greatest impact on him. An impressive list of rugby minds coached him at international level; the late Jacques Fouroux – le petit caporal – and latterly Jean-Claude Skrela and Pierre Villepreux. Saint-André emphasises however that it was Pierre Berbizier and his demanding and precociously professional approach that “influenced me the most”.

However Saint-André does not simply regurgitate what he has learned from his masters. What makes PSA different from most of his French counterparts is that his coaching experience has been enriched by his time in England. By his own admission, he has learned an “enormous amount in England”, whether it be with regard to the way players eat and prepare or the role of a director of rugby “whose job is to facilitate and coordinate the squad’s abilities”.

“Anglo-Saxon rugby specialised much earlier than France with regards to specific training for hookers, kickers and the defence and this gave more value to each player in each position,” Saint-André says. Toulon’s English manager Tom Whitford knows him well and argues that Saint-André has applied this method with success: “In the past there have often been a lot of good intentions, but when things go wrong, it was hard to find out who is responsible. With PSA, you have your job, you have your remit, it is more professional and there is more accountability.” Delegation, a surprising and somewhat atypical habit for a French coach, may therefore be Saint-André’s trump card. In naming Patrice Lagisquet as backs coach and putting set-piece guru Yannick Bru in charge of the forwards, he has picked two of the most knowledgeable coaches from the two clubs who have dominated French rugby for the last ten years, Biarritz and Toulouse.

So will France still be France with PSA? This is, after all, the winger who gave meaning to French flair by initiating the “try from the end of the world” against the All Blacks in 1994. Not averse to traditional French rugby values which he believes came to the fore “when the team was at its peak, when the team was on the same wavelength”, it is doubtful he will apply them in the way in which the free-spirited duo of Skrela and Villepreux or more recently Marc Lièvremont tried to do.

Indeed, we are more likely to see a traditional Saint-André game plan which is above all pragmatic – set piece, kicking, defence – and even a little conservative.

To succeed, he will have to control discipline, the traditional Achilles heel of French rugby. On this note, however, PSA is upbeat, stating that one of the reasons for France reaching the final of last year’s World Cup was their discipline, something which he describes as “a prerequisite”. Off the field, PSA believes that discipline is as important as on the field, especially in the “age of new media with new forms of communication such as Twitter, the role of players is one of being irreproachable on and off the field”. Maintaining a disciplined set-up may however be his toughest challenge, for PSA does not often go for confrontation.

He will also need to instil consistency, the lack of which has traditionally blighted the French. No other rugby nation is better known for going from the grotesque to the sublime in the space of a week, as they have famously done at the World Cup, whether it be against Australia in ’87, New Zealand twice in ’99 and ’07 and more recently against England last autumn. This inconsistency is the key factor in understanding why France is the only one of the five biggest rugby nations never to have won the World Cup. As PSA says of their 2011 experience: “France could well have not qualified from their pool, while in the final, they deserved to be world champions.”

He will be obliged to blood just a few new faces. In picking a great number of the World Cup finalists, he has taken few risks, yet a number of that group are the wrong side of 30 with RWC ’15 in mind. He has included a handful of younger plays who are making a name for themselves in the Top 14 and several international stalwarts banished under the Lièvremont regime are back in favour. Big things are expected from Wesley Fofana, the Clermont centre, and Toulouse second row Yoann Maestri who has been labelled the next Fabien Pelous.

Saint-André’s mission to better his predecessors starts with Italy at home on Saturday. This is a first red letter day for PSA and a chance to take revenge for the disgraced French outfit who lost in the Rome debacle last year. From there, France will play host to Ireland, before heading to Edinburgh and Saint-André is not short of compliments with regards to Scotland.

“They are a very dangerous team who, at the World Cup, dominated the Argentines and the English for 70 minutes then lost during the money [injury] time,” he says. “Scotland is a team in constant progress with a great deal of quality and Edinburgh is having an outstanding run in the Heineken Cup. The trip to Scotland will be complicated and dangerous.”

With this in mind, Saint-André may therefore remind his team of his captain’s pep talk in 1994, prior to the Five Nations game at Murrayfield, in an Edinburgh bar. He sat his nervous team-mates down and bought them a beer each. As the last drops were drained, he reminded them that pressure was only in the beer, not on their shoulders.

Saint-André can choose the right words and the right team but very soon his decision making and leadership skills will be under intense scrutiny in the high level arena of international rugby.

• Phil Fitzgerald is a former hooker with Toulon where he played under Saint-André.