LONDON, 15 October 2007 — It wasn’t a pretty match by the high standards already set in this tournament, but England gave it their all right till the final whistle to march into their second successive Rugby World Cup final by beating a hapless France 14-9 in a tense battle at a sell-out Stade de France on Saturday evening.
The French have an apt phrase for this sort of occasion — deja vu. We’ve been here before. In fact, France has lost three times against the English in the knock stages of the rugby World Cup since the tournament started a couple of decades ago.
It is a sporting double whammy in another sense. Having stolen the 2012 Olympics from Paris a year ago, England has now stolen the Rugby World Cup from them. This is a latterday Agincourt and a Waterloo which could affect the psyche of generations for French sportsmen and women.
Brian Ashton, the quiet and unassuming former schoolmaster turned England head coach, was his usual stoical. “We are in the final. We’re there. I don’t care about anything else. We won’t rest on our laurels. We are taking one match at a time, and are looking forward to the final,” he said after the match with hardly an emotion in sight.
At the end it was the English bulldog spirit with its ‘never say die’ ethos and the educated boot of flyhalf Jonny Wilkinson that made the difference between the two sides. Put another way, the English were far more desperate to be in next weekend’s final than their opponents.
What an occasion for the wrong French team to turn up — leaderless, lacklustre and unimaginative. They even gifted Josh Lewsey a try in the opening minute of the match when French fullback Damien Traille failed to gather a kick and allowed the English winger to bundle over for an easy score. This is the result of choosing a player out of position, for Traille is normally a winger or center.
While the 30,000 strong English fans celebrated with a chorus of Chariots of Fire, someone from the Stade de France management must have secretly anticipated the inevitable – a French defeat. Not even a rendition of the great Edith Piaff’s beautifully haunting and sombre Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien was enough to console a shocked nation. At least, it was a poignant reminder that even in defeat the French have style.
So what went right for the English and wrong for the French? Let us not get carried away with the superlatives ‘Ces Magnifique’ or ‘Premiere Rosbif’. The match was much closer than the result indicates. Had French center Vincent Clerc evaded the ankle tap of England’s replacement flanker Joe Worsely with the tryline begging late in the second half, surely he would have been over for a match-winning try.
But fate was with the brave English, with Wilkinson giving them a six- point cushion midway through the second half with his customary drop goal and penalty kick. While Wilkinson’s general play was far from his best, he was immense in defense – a characteristic of great flyhalves. His partner, scrumhalf Andy Gomarsall led like a general, keeping things tight at the edges of the scrum, the rucks and mauls.
In contrast, Lionel Beauxis and Jean-Baptiste Elissalde were a disastrous halfback pair. Rookie Beauxis kicked aimlessly and twice his kicks got charged down which could have led to English tries.
