France vs Wales; St. Bridget's Day, 2019

swiwi_

Even Venjur with his floaters would have trouble matching vahaamahina.

Tigerandahalf

The sub loosehead (Pristo I think he is) is quite a good scrummager. His physique would remind one of Cian Healy.

That sub lock for France looked really good too. Every time he took the ball he took a step rather than using blunt force to get over the gain line. If he can do well in the lineout he looks a future player for them, an area they have struggled in for a long time.

Was Dupont the scrumhalf injured? I would have thought he would have started. Serin's passing looked very laboured when he came on.

Burkie1203

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

The sub loosehead (Pristo I think he is) is quite a good scrummager. His physique would remind one of Cian Healy.

That sub lock for France looked really good too. Every time he took the ball he took a step rather than using blunt force to get over the gain line. If he can do well in the lineout he looks a future player for them, an area they have struggled in for a long time.

Was Dupont the scrumhalf injured? I would have thought he would have started. Serin's passing looked very laboured when he came on.

Marchand injured his knee at the end. Nothing confirmed yet but he looked in trouble. Massive blow for them. If its ACL means no RWC

mangobob

It has already been mentioned by a few posters above, but I have to say I am amazed at some of the comments here regarding Wales and how they are no longer a worry for Ireland. Yes they were terrible for 40mins and were bloody lucky to win. Yes France absolutely imploded and literally handed them 14 points. But how on earth can anyone with even a passing familiarity with this tournament extrapolate that performance out to the last game and believe that Wales will be that poor again when we face them in Cardiff? They will be orders of magnitude better, especially if they are still in the hunt for a GS at that point. Even if they have nothing to play for, our welsh cousins always raise their game against us and last year they were arguably an intercepted pass away from beating us at the Aviva. Imo it is now the tournaments biggest rivalry and they will be targetting that game big time.

Its a cliche at this point but Shane Williams was absolutely right in saying that this is a momentum tournament and you need a large slice of luck to win it. You take your wins any way you can get them at the start and then you build from there. Ireland are notoriously slow starters too. Last year we were seriously underwhelming in very similar conditions against the French and we needed a moment of brilliance from Sexton to win it. For 82 odd minutes you would never have guessed that we would be GS champions. By the time we rocked up against England we were a completely different beast. Wales will be also.

They are a fantastic team with some very good players and a top class coach. They are also on a very long winning streak and are not 3rd in the world for nothing. If there is to be a GS this year, they are still my favourites to do it. Congrats to all of our welsh board members on that result. You certainly rode your luck but you really stepped up in the second half and showed plenty of composure in defence to see it out at the end. You can take the general level of grumbling and begrudgery on this thread as a measure of how anxious most people are about that final game. Here's hoping that Ireland can get to that last game with all to play for which will make for a tremendous cliffhanger. However if we are even a few percent off our best, we could easily be turned over by England and again in Murrayfield and be out of the running entirely by March 16th, so I am not counting a single chicken. Right now we have our hands full with a very dangerous team and I would take a 1 point flukey win, such is the importance of the first game. Allez les verts.

Only catching up on this now.

Wales weren't clinical in the first half but they were the better team. France didn't really manufacture much and their early scores were a mixture of individual french skill and individual welsh errors but the two systems of rugby on display told a very different story.

France are terribly coached. They are terribly coached and after a few phases they look AIL standard. The type of fitness they emphasis is also robbing them of a final quarter. They've turned into a poor man's South Africa and I wouldn't be surprised if they lose at home to Scotland or away to Italy.

Wales on the other hand look quite settled. They didn't panic after the first half and the scores they gave away were not obvious system failures. Gatland couldn't wait to take Anscombe off. As soon as he finally slotted a kick he was gone and Biggar had an immediate impact and I'm certain will start next week. He has obviously heard the criticism and had a settled performance and dictated the game from his first touch of the ball.

Wales in the driving seat now, they've an away win on the board against one of the traditionally top teams. They are going to be seriously hard to beat in Cardiff and if Ireland win this afternoon I could see a serious show down coming down the tracks in 6 weeks time.

Ardillaun

I’d like to see a smaller French pack with better scrummaging technique. They used to grind other teams down there.

Wales are efficient at the moment, a bit like ourselves, and Williams was excellent at 15 in awful conditions.