In the halls of the Stade de France on Saturday night, the atmosphere was full of self-criticism. The Blues, despite their clear (48-33) win over Australia, many prefer to remember the negative points of this match, and of the autumn tour in general: the defense (conceded five tries on Saturday, 12 in three games in November, 22 missed tackles), and consequently, the indiscipline (12 penalties, free kicks and a yellow card conceded).
We almost forgot that the Blues beat Australia by scoring almost 50 points. “Not many French teams do that,” recalls the experienced Gaël Fickou. “I prefer to maintain the fun we have rediscovered offensively,” Louis Bielle-Biarrey also underlined with a rediscovered stick (two tries and two assists). Before realizing two of the night’s pitfalls for himself: “Defensively, we were a bit weak at times. Discipline was also a bit tricky. We were often caught offside…”
“There were dark spots, including discipline,” stressed Thomas Ramos, who was perfect on Saturday night but grumpy after the game. We gave them too many chances to come back to us, to take another penalty, to be able to get back to our 22 meters. We gave them too much ammunition to survive the night. »
“We are not disciplined enough to play at this level”
Same observation for Gaël Fickou. “It was our indiscipline that made them fall behind in the match,” complained the Racing 92 player. “Otherwise they don’t have much, they don’t put us in big trouble.” With the score 19-19 at the break, the Blues gave themselves a scare. They were warned, however, after the first two matches against South Africa (17-32) and Fiji (34-21) where their mistakes were already weighing on them.
“We asked ourselves to be disciplined, but apparently we weren’t,” complained Ramos. We told ourselves that our discipline was not good in last week’s game, we focused on that during the week, and we attacked the international game by taking penalties after a minute, a minute and a half…” “Discipline was the focus this week, but it didn’t work, Bielle-Biarrey emphasized. We weren’t disciplined enough to play at that level. »
Arbitrage and too much desire
How do we explain this overabundance of errors? “We always do very well in this area, and on this tour, I don’t know what happened,” Fickou was still surprised. We should get a cold reply. » Slightly different officiating between Top 14 and international matches is the beginning of an explanation. “In the Top 14, the refereeing was different, maybe a little looser in the fray. There, nothing happened, that’s how it was,” Fickou recalled.
Second row Emmanuel Meafou, who experienced the emotion of playing with the Blues against his home country, in front of his family, recorded an outpouring of desire to explain the misplacement. “When you are under pressure, everyone does too much, we were offside because we wanted too much,” assured the Toulouse giant. But we’ll fix all that between now and the Six Nations Tournament. »
Facing a very picky team in this field, starting with the Irish team who will meet the Blues in the Tournament opener here at the Stade de France on February 5, we need to get things right. “The lack of discipline on this tour has cost us dearly,” Fickou admitted. It’s good to be aware of that, because in the Six Nations we will have no margin for error…”
