LONDON, 17 March 2008 — Wales beat France 29-12 in front of record 75,000-strong crowd in a pulsating match at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium to clinch the Grand Slam and Rugby’s Six Nations Championship, the second Slam which the Welsh Dragons have won in the last four years.
Only a fortnight ago, the Welsh won the Triple Crown after beating Ireland at Croke Park in Dublin, having seen off England and Scotland on the way. To think that the 2008 Grand Slam is the 10th one which the famous red jerseys of Wales have won — the first of which was one a remarkable 100 years ago almost to this day.
It was a fitting climax in the early evening of Saturday to a tournament which is the envy of the world, so much so that Argentina is seriously lobbying to enter the championship as the seventh nation. With players’ wives and partners on display in the stands, including the singer Charlotte Church, partner of Welsh center Gavin Henson, and amidst a melodious chorus of ‘Land of My Fathers’ and ‘Wales Forever’, the atmosphere could not have been more electric and expectant. The Welsh are famous for two things — rugby and singing. And when they are on song, the two usually go together in perfect harmony. Fortunately for Wales, the real French team never turned up on Saturday evening. This is not to take anything away from the gallant Welshman. They out-thought, out-tackled and out-ran a French side that simply did not know what to do with a rugby ball.
When they had possession, which was for huge chunks of play, the French were virtually at standstill, moving the ball laterally with hardly any of their customary forward thrusts or penetration from their famed backs. Not, surprisingly, most of the match was played in French territory even though they dominated possession.
In more than three decades of watching the Les Bleus play rugby, never have I seen lethargy, indecisiveness and a lack of ambition from a French side on the scale I saw at the Millennium Stadium on Saturday. It was embarrassing at times. With 10 minutes to go and the score poised at 19-9, the French had a scrum some five yards from the Welsh tryline. It was a ridiculous spectacle at international level to see the French team being pushed back against the head, which gave the Welsh pack possibly a try-and-match-saving turnaround ball, from which the French never recovered. Martyn Williams, the superb Welsh flanker who was forced out of early retirement and the ‘Man of the Match’, went on to score a typical loose forward’s try under the post to complete the French humiliation. Fly-half Stephen Jones duly obliged with the conversion and kicked another penalty in the dying minutes to clinch a memorable Grand Slam.
An early 9-3 lead was whittled away by France after Gavin Henson’s sin-binning on the stroke of halftime. But Shane Williams got the crucial score on 60 minutes when he intercepted and kicked on to outpace the French defense to the touchdown under the posts, becoming the all-time top try scorer for Wales in the process, beating the record 41 tries held by Gareth Thomas. For the Welsh coach Warren Gatland, a New Zealander, and his defense coach, Shaun Edwards, an Englishman, its was first time lucky. They instilled a self-belief into Wales of enormous proportions considering this tiny nation’s disastrous performance in the rugby World Cup in France last year. England will rue letting Edwards slip through their fingers and re-appointing Brian Ashton as head coach after finishing runners-up to the Springboks in the World Cup. England did salvage some of their pride with a 33-10 victory over a clueless Ireland at Twickenham on Saturday in the second of the earlier matches on the final day of the Six Nations Championship. But they had already succumbed embarrassingly to Wales at home, and to Scotland at Murrayfield in the Calcutta Cup clash. In the other match, Italy beat Scotland 23-20 with a last minute drop goal by center Mercato, to clinch their first victory of the tournament and the first for new coach Nick Mallet, the former Springbok captain and coach.
The 2008 Six Nations Championships could well be remembered as the tournament of the long knives. Three coaches — England’s Brian Ashton, Ireland’s Eddie O’Sullivan and Scotland’s Frank Haddon are all expected to get the sack. If the French team continue to play as they have been during this championship, then Marc Lievremont’s head will also be on the chopping block. He has shown a breathtaking naivety in his selection policy, chopping and changing his team, especially the half-backs almost from one game to another.
The main culprits for the French team were fly-half David Skrela whose woeful kicking started the rut in French confidence; and his scrum-half partner Jean-Baptiste Elissalde, who obviously does not know the intricacies of how to play rugby. At one stage, Skrela restarting play on the halfway line, actually kicked the ball backwards five yards from a kick-off. It was bizarre.
Time and again, Elissalde purposefully slowed down the ball by refusing to play the quick ball at the base of the scrum, ruck or at any breakdown. Instead of capitalising on the element of speed and surprise, he repeatedly allowed the Welsh defense to regroup, with the result the French never looked like crossing the gain line, let alone scoring a try.
This seems to be a feature of current French scrum-half play. Elissalde repeated this tactic in all the matches that I have seen him play. Dimitri Yachvili, his replacement, also tends to do this, which is baffling because it is against the logic of playing rugby, which is to get quick ball to your players. This tactic would have been anathema to the great French scrum-halves of yesteryear including Lilian Camberabaro, Jacques Foroux and Pierre Berbezier.
The fact that France insisted on playing running rugby even from within their 25, instead of kicking into touch to gain territory, was again baffling. It led to inevitable errors which led to penalties and points on the board for Wales.
France entered the game having not lost a championship game in Cardiff since 1996 and needing a 19-point win to steal the RBS Six Nations title from Wales. But it soon became obvious that this French team did not have the Gallic guile and guts to pull off a stunning victory. The French forward lacked leadership and concentration. Thierry Dusautoir and Jeasn Bonnaire, the captain, usually the kingpins of French playmaking, were nerved into repeated errors. The French backs lacked their usual imagination with Traille and Jauzion reduced to mediocrity. Even the great Vincent Clerc, hitherto the top try-scorer for France, with his darting and blistering pace, was forced into error after error. For Wales Lee Byrne, Mark Jones, Ian Gough, gaining his 50th cap, and captain Ryan Jones excelled, but this was a team effort par excellence.
In terms of spectacle, Wales was the only team in the 2008 Six Nations Championship that showed the organization in both defense and attack; the determination and ambition to win; the skills set of key individual players; and leadership through its captain, Ryan Jones.
