2023-11-08 21:18:50
2023 Rugby World Cup in FrancedossierWednesday November 8 was the highly anticipated first press conference of the French coach after the elimination of the French XV in the Rugby World Cup.
After the elimination of France in the quarter-final of the Rugby World Cup (but let’s see, remember: Antoine Dupont with a helmet, lousy rebounds that make the oval ball look like dice, an insulting Francophobic and Machiavellian referee the patriotic fiber… all that), Fabien Galthié has cut ties. A final press conference, in accordance with protocol, on this cursed October 15, an hour after the defeat, 29-28 against South Africa, in the bowels of a Stade de France which, suddenly, had just transformed into tomb, and that’s it. Hi everyone.
Should we blame the coach for going off on a tangent, he who had just given up four years of his professional life – and undoubtedly also a good part of his private life – to the preparation of the event with, as his avowed objective, winning a first world title, on his land what’s more? Hell no. But not everyone heard it that way, some even ending up finding such silence suspicious (even though it only lasted twenty-four days!), since there were still fifteen days of competition to comment on. , on the one hand, and, above all, everything to be rebuilt, within a French rugby team totally stunned by this immense disillusionment.
“We die at one point”
But, yes, Fabien Galthié, like many of the players in the group, had taken off, only giving his news most involuntarily when a celebrity weekly showed him on the front page, naked, on a pebble beach in Normandy, with his partner. The return to sporting life was planned for the end of November. However, yielding to media pressure, the French Rugby Federation decided to bring the start of the school year forward by three weeks, as part of a carefully staged afternoon. First by appointing, for the duration of a session, the coach coach of the PUC youth team – the ancestral institution of Ile-de-France rugby – around 57 players aged 10-12 who will certainly keep memories of it for life. Then, in the process, by organizing a press conference in the modest club house of the said club, at the Charléty stadium backing onto the Paris ring road, where, behind a bay window, kids were playing football below on a synthetic lawn when the boss makes his entrance, in a blue tracksuit.
In a small, crowded room, the exchange did not reveal anything shocking which, in a now usual tone, consisted of replaying the match with balance, as if drawing up a generally positive assessment of the path traveled and starting to imagine the move according to ecumenical bases. “We had to give time to mourn, for me, the staff and the players,” said the Gersois, who also spoke of “injury” to, in the dolorist register, drive home the point of the crucifixion of one: “And we die at one point.”
However, if it had to be done again, he would not change anything, from a strategy point of view, referring to the data certifying that, according to all arithmetic logic, France should have scored around ten points more in this meeting, which he first seen again four or five days later, “not willingly”, because to meet “purely professional” obligations, then about ten times since. “We have to accept defeat, because when we play at this level we must be ready to win, as well as to experience what we have experienced, only the world champion not having pain” once again, recalled Galthié.
«Messages d’affection»
Feeling a little called to account, he also made sure to look back on the past four years, recalling several times that, since the start of his mandate, France – which, at the end of 2019, he had inherited in a pitiful state – has achieved an 80% winning rate and regained its position in the top circle of world rugby with a current ranking in 4th place, after having oscillated over the last two years between 1st and 3rd. On his arrival, he also recalled that he came to win “titles”, but that to date these have only been granted in the singular, with only one Six Nations Tournament, won in 2022. But, from his point of view, progress remains significant: based on the triptych “gather, unite and share”, the mission has been successfully completed. “Messages of support and affection” poured in after the debacle, and, above all, the good results achieved benefit all French rugby, which plays at all levels in well-filled stadiums. Morality: “I want to believe that we will continue to walk together” anticipates the coach, sending an not even veiled message to the Top 14 clubs which, now that there is no longer a short or medium term global objective could be tempted to let go less easily of the nuggets that they continue to hire when they defend the colors of the national selection.
Ready to “start again on a four-year protocol”, with a team that, notwithstanding inevitable changes, he imagines “even stronger and more experienced”, Fabien Galthié predicted: “The best is to come.” Which doesn’t commit to anything. At least in the short term.
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