For weeks, Fabien Galthié, the coach of the XV of France, hammers it: August 21 is certainly the date fixed to designate the players selected for the Rugby World Cup, which starts in less than three weeks, it does not however, does not act as a cleaver or a deadline. It’s just a little cross drawn on the big one “arrow of time” traced when he took office, in the wake of the last World Cup, and which points to the final of this 2023 edition, on October 28.
All the same: if this preparation for the planetary tournament, at home, was a tour of the circuit, this list of thirty-three players would be the penultimate corner. The meeting against Australia on Sunday would then be the last, before the final line leading to the monumental opening match of the tournament against New Zealand on September 8.
Fabien Galthié is not entirely wrong, however. The proof: no real surprise is to be noted in the list, announced in the 1 p.m. news of TF1, by a video featuring people proclaiming with more or less assurance the names of the players, all interspersed with postcard images of a rural, colorful and somewhat uniform France. And for good reason: for the most part, this list is not the result of last-minute choices or unforeseen events. ” Everything is ready “even assured the coach barely thirty-six hours before the announcement.
The arrangement of these thirty-three players is indeed the result of work started in 2019. Over the course of the competitions contested by the Blues, Fabien Galthié has built his typical team, making adjustments in favor of injuries, mishaps and revelations, with remarkable stability and consistency when you consider how inconstant its predecessors have been. “Each player roughly knows his position, each player was able to read our potential decisions through our exchanges”, he specified thus before lifting the veil on the identity of the elected officials.
The group announced on Monday therefore includes some of the best specialists in the world in their positions (Julien Marchand and Cyril Baille on the front line, Grégory Alldritt on the third line, Antoine Dupont in the scrum, Gaël Fickou in the center, Damian Penaud on the wing and Thomas Ramos at the back). Something new, almost all of these thirty-three selected are used to playing together, and therefore have common benchmarks and habits.
Some sources of surprise
This is also one of the markers of Fabien Galthié’s mandate. Well helped by advantageous agreements between the French Rugby Federation and the National Rugby League – which represents the clubs – the coach of the XV of France was able to constitute before each expiry of his mandate a troop of forty-two players, although more than the thirty necessary for a match. Practical, to test all the hopes of the tricolor Ovalie, to carry out productive training and to constitute a pool of experienced players in which it is easy to draw when the holders are on the flank or at rest.
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