timeThe big wheel on Marseille’s Borelli beach turns day and night in all four seasons, with two laps costing 8 euros each. It’s 55m high and from the top you can see the Velodrome stadium a few hundred meters inland, where France and Ireland were busy preparing for another go-around on Thursday afternoon.
It’s been three months and 19 days since the World Cup quarter-finals here and there are still plenty of old game posters hanging around town, but it’s time for the cycle to start again and the opening game of this year’s top six. nation.
At this time last year, France and Ireland were ranked first and second in the world, and the game between them ultimately decided the championship. Twelve months on, they are behind South Africa and fourth-placed France behind New Zealand. The current ranking doesn’t mean much. South Africa have the Webb Ellis Trophy, which is all that matters, but this shift does reflect the hard truth that while neither team is performing any better than they did in previous years at the World Cup, they before it counts towards the knockout round.
Well, on Friday night we’ll get our first look at how they’ve responded to that setback, with the changes they’ve made to the way they play, and while neither side will admit it, there’s also a chance to iron out some lingering nagging feelings. They must be disappointed.
France spent eight years preparing for the World Cup. “We will be scarred for life, it is part of our journey,” said their manager, Fabien Galthié, who finally spoke out last November. “We’ve all experienced some kind of introspection, first personally and then collectively.”
Ireland has also been looking at what went wrong. Their manager Andy Farrell said he started thinking about it a minute after the final whistle. “We are the last ones who shy away from discussing our performance and learning from it,” said Peter O’Mahony.
The word has come up in every conversation he’s had over a cup of coffee “for the past few months.” No wonder he said he wanted to put it all behind him. “We’re not trying to prove to ourselves what happened. It’s not about getting things done, it’s about a test match tomorrow night.”
O’Mahony takes on the role of captain, one of the few changes to the squad. He leads a team that features rookie forward 24-year-old Jake Crowley, lock Joe McCarthy and wing Calvin Nash, but other than that, it’s been a fairly rough and familiar performance. The most obvious difference is who they’re missing. Ireland have won seven of 11 Test matches against France over the past decade, with Johnny Sexton starting in each victory. He missed two games and Ireland lost both games.
Whether it’s his leadership or his shooting ability, Sexton is the cog in the Irish offense’s turnaround, and no one is sure the team would be as smooth as it was without him.
O’Mahony had known Crowley for a long time and had full confidence in him. “I remember him playing for the Con and getting reports that he was the real deal, fast forward a few years and here we are,” he said.
“He learned a lot under Johnny and others like Joey Carberry and Rose Byrne. He was an unbelievable guy who would watch games, study games, do hours of analysis , hours of extra training in the gym. He still has a lot to do, but he knows it better than anyone.”
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France have lost their captain and talisman Antoine Dupont, who took the rest of the Test season off from playing rugby sevens ahead of this summer’s Olympics, as well as their regular fly-half Romain Romain Ntamack, he’s injured. But they have two ready-made substitutes: Mathieu Jalibert and Maxime Lukou, who play together for Bordeaux. Gregory Aldritt takes over as captain. Other than that, the only real surprise in their squad was the selection of Yoram Moefana, who is usually a center forward, instead of the talented young Louis Biele-Biare Bielle-Biarrey).
Bier-Biare struggled to handle high balls against the Springboks and it was suspected that was why he was left on the bench alongside slippery scrum-half Nolan Le Garay Gram and strong lock Pozoro Tuilagi, who earned a last-minute call-up to replace Romain Taofifenua.
Tuilaji was the nephew of Manu Tuilaji. He joined the team as a trainee two weeks ago and went straight into Matchday 23 after the federation received clarification on his eligibility. He’s 19 years old, but you wouldn’t necessarily guess that considering he’s 6-foot-4 and quite heavy. The best part about the 24th.
As Galthie pointed out, France are a young team and still on the rise. They will also be reinvigorated by playing in Marseille, away from the ghost of the Stade de France, which, like Dupont, has been appropriated for the Olympics.
Paris fans may be a little fickle, but the crowd here is anything but ambivalent. It’s going to be a hot night and you can be sure it’s going to be one hell of a game between these two teams with much to prove.
