France v Wales (pre/during/post thread)

Sherifu

Noffles wrote: »

I agree there is a degree of sourness to my post but the negativity is borderline ridiculous, taking such delight in Wales loss is surely just as "Lemons" don't you think?

I didn't see the match myself but anyone i've heard talking about it have said it was a much improved and changed French side. I was happy to see France win so Ireland may have a better shot at the slam but we've got a lot of work to do yet. And as for this thread I haven't read it to be honest so you may well be right. I'm only really focusing on Ireland, Wales are a quality side and I enjoy watching them throwing it about.

Webbs

France put in their best performance since NZ in the WC and Wales were taken completely by surprise , yet still could have sneaked it. In the past a Welsh team would have disappeared without a trace under an avalanche of French points. The resilience of Wales will be a worry for Ireland.

But , what Ireland will be happy about is that Wales seemed to lack the intelligence or ambition to change their game plan when faced with something they werent expecting.
Will Kidney change the Ireland game plan which until now has been successful but has not changed the tactics?
I would say both Wales and Ireland needed to vary things when faced with opposition that were very strong in defence, neither really succeeding, admittedly with obviously different results on the scoreboard.

Noone expected to see such a strong effective rush defence from France and a 'limited' game plan, in that I mean France were not going to throw the ball around as everyone had predicted and took it up to the welsh gain line and beyond with short pop balls.

I dont subscribe to this bashing of Wales and them being taken down a peg or two etc. surely a professional team who has had a successful run under the current coach will be confident the trick is to avoid overconfidence and to deal with the favourite tag.
I would say that both Wales and Ireland dont do well wearing that tag at the moment, but should try and engender a confident and possibly arrogant attitude - who are the most successful rugby teams and who are the most arrogant (NZ, SA, Aus, Eng anyone?)

Erin Go Brath

What Ireland will be happy about is that Wales got beaten and Ireland are provided with possibly our best ever chance of winning the Championship. I think we can take this Wales team down in Cardiff, and the Scots aswell to win the Slam.

France showed how to do it with a tough forward dominating performance. They abandoned their free flowing style which worked well for them in the past, especially against us, and replaced it with a nuts and bolts, tough tackling solid performance. Note to Ireland team, look at how France smothered Shane Williams amongst others, if we nullify the exciting Welsh backs we are halfway there.

Noffles

Agree with the two above posts, France played intelligently against Wales and we we're left wanting, the players that were expected to perform where played out of the game... It's a lesson learned though and Wales should be able to respond.

We'll hockey Italy to get the points and leave it to you to get past the Scots, then there's a win the championship or win the Slam in Cardiff!

If only Henson had played the ball wide.... if only......

nacho libre

corny wrote: »

Don't know how you came up with that. Bar Marconnet that was the same French pack that played us. We dominated them then and we dominated them last year too. Theres no evidence to suggest the French have a better pack than ours so why could we not do to Wales what the French did to them?

I think if the French had played like that against us they would have won. They were inconsistent against us and not as clinical when they had chances.

Lievermont alluded to the fact the players were rusty and he was disappointed by their lack of physicality in the game against Ireland. Now that could be just excuses on his part. I'm just worried the likes of Powell and Ryan Jones will have more success against us in the loose than they did against France. Although, Powell in particular does seem to be overrated as he failed to make the hard yards in the loose against England too

To me it seem some Welsh players got carried away with themselves a bit, especially when you consider some of them started to believe the hype about being the best conditioned team in the competition and being bigger physicially to a man than the rest of the teams.

twinytwo

nacho libre wrote: »

I think if the French had played like that against us they would have won. They were inconsistent against us and not as clinical when they had chances.

Lievermont alluded to the fact the players were rusty and he was disappointed by their lack of physicality in the game against Ireland. Now that could be just excuses on his part. I'm just worried the likes of Powell and Ryan Jones will have more success against us in the loose than they did against France. Although, Powell in particular does seem to be overrated as he failed to make the hard yards in the loose against England too

To me it seem some Welsh players got carried away with themselves a bit, especially when you consider some of them started to believe the hype about being the best conditioned team in the competition and being bigger physicially to a man than the rest of the teams.

The down fall of all the good teams... Only players imo that we will have to keep an eye on are obviously Shane Williams and Tom Shanklin the rest we can easily match. Shanklin goes down the 10/12 channel especially if Paddy is at 12 and if he isnt stopped we could be in alot of trouble