by When the final whistle blows, France and England will be looking at this year’s Six Nations championship and hoping they can sort things out a little bit. This edition of “Le Crunch” won’t really hold second place, and the team or the organizers of the competition hardly showed that big finish.
However, it is a significant psychological competition for everyone involved. France, after falling short of the World Cup themselves, are searching for their best form and a quiet end to their campaign would ease the pressure on their head coach, Fabien Galthié. Similarly, the visitors are keen not to be satisfied with the feel-good momentum created by their thrilling win over Ireland last Saturday.
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Every coach wants to see week-on-week improvement and England, in particular, have not been known recently for backing big wins against decent teams. The most striking example was in 2019 when they put in a stunning performance to see off the All Blacks in the semi-finals of the World Cup, only to be undone by South Africa’s scrum power in the final.
That painful lesson is still on the mind of Jamie George, the England captain, and he raised the matter this week with his head coach, Steve Borthwick. “He was one of the first things I spoke to when we met again and he was already in the spotlight,” said George, as keen as anyone for England to build on the promise shown at Twickenham. “I learned a big lesson in 2019 after New Zealand’s performance about emotional highs and lows. Saturday was probably as emotional a performance as we’ve had since 2019. You have to allow yourself to come down to pick yourself back up and get a spike at the right time.”
As England now concede, they made the mistake in 2019 of assuming they could just roll from weekend to weekend without resetting themselves mentally and physically. Almost five years later George says he and his partners got the process wrong in Japan. “We believed the hype and kept alive [the semi-final win] for three or four days afterwards.
“You’re in the World Cup final last week and I’ve had every distraction under the sun. People trying to come over, thousands asking you for tickets, people from school coming out of the woodwork that I haven’t spoken to in 10 years. It’s great but it can be really distracting and I probably learned that the hard way. We definitely got it wrong. We didn’t reach the highs of the previous week and what I learned is that you have to give yourself space to get away from things and reflect. Do what you have to do.”
So is England’s determination to avoid the same trap this time around. The performance against Ireland encouraged everyone involved in the squad but complacency will be fatal against a French side that will be about a ton of scrummaging weight. “It will be a huge challenge… it would be naive to say no,” England scrum coach Tom Harrison said as the players finished their preparations on the billiard table surface at Lyon’s impressive 59,000-capacity stadium.
George, who is set to play his 90th Test for England, relishes this kind of challenge – “I know exactly what’s coming …” – and also has fond memories of helping Saracens win the Cup winning the European Championship at the same venue in 2016. That was it too. last year, however, England last won the Six Nations in France and it will not be easy to replicate the emotional surge experienced by the teams last Saturday. “At training on Tuesday I still felt like I was made of wood,” George said. “[But] it’s incredible what Steve has done in terms of giving us space to come down to allow us to come back up. I can say with confidence that we were given space to recover mentally and physically.”
For added motivation, England don’t have to look far back. Their 53-10 defeat at home to France at Twickenham 12 months ago was as humbling as they suffered in the Six Nations and George will forcefully remind his players of the need to make amends. “Sure,” said the 33-year-old hawker. “We were terrible. It wasn’t even the result – France was great but we weren’t working. The minimum we should be about is fighting and showing character. That game was the complete opposite. We got up, we looked tired, we weren’t ahead physically. That’s not the kind of team we want to be and it hurts me to this day.”
In a world obsessed with details, in short, the importance of conveying emotions in the best possible way is always so crucial. As George confirms, England have no problem turning up for games when their backs are against the dressing room wall. It’s only occasions like this where team leaders try to push whatever buttons they can find that make things less simple.
“I’ve said to the rest of the team, ‘We didn’t pull it off, one result doesn’t mean we’re a great team,'” said George. “But to be able to put it back puts us in the right direction and gives us the confidence to know we can do it against the best.
“Encouragingly, if we win we will go into the top four in the world. We will use that but at the same time we don’t want external factors to be the driver for this team to be up and running. The more consistent and better teams, the teams that have been on top the longest, are the teams that find a way to do that week after week. We managed to achieve something special last weekend but being able to support it is a huge motivation for me. Good teams react well to adversity, great teams make sure they support it.”
Nicely expressed, as always, by George. France still have plenty of talent and a lethal goalkeeper in Thomas Ramos but post-World Cup ennui and the pain-free absence of Antoine Dupont are sapping their collective energy. This gave their opponents a chance and this England team also has a fresh glint in their eye. Four wins out of five league games would be an impressive result and, in theory at least, a title is still up for grabs.
“We can’t control what happens in Dublin but at the same time we have a great chance to go out and do something special,” said George, insisting he can deliver another exciting win. for England. If France can’t rediscover her old va voom, she may be right.
