France star evaluates Six Nations campaign after ‘chaotic’ clash with England
France flanker Francois Cros after Six Nations game.
In the aftermath of a Le Crunch thriller in Lyon, Planet Rugby’s James While caught up with arguably France’s player of the tournament, flanker Francois Cros.
Speaking after his side’s entertaining 33-31 victory on Super Saturday, the back-rower believes England have turned a massive corner under head coach Steve Borthwick.
Once again the Toulouse breakaway was in tireless form, igniting two key tries for France with a brilliant lineout steal followed by a midfield carry that took England apart for the Leo Barre score. But Cros admitted that it was an uphill task and was one of those matches that could have easily fallen either way.
New England
“I think we recognise that England had a lot of movement in their staff before the World Cup and just after, so for them they are embedding new systems and perhaps getting used to a different style of coaching,” he said.
“They needed a little time for those systems to bed in and to feel comfortable in their new strategies and now I think they’ve reached a point of comfort and are playing extremely well and have had a very good Six Nations, perhaps not always in results but certainly in the style and ambition they have shown.
“For us it was a match of two parts – the first half was really chaotic and we struggled to control it and we were not happy in the way we reacted. In the second, we reacted better to the chances that came our way and started to gain a little more control in the chaos and noise of a great game.
“We spoke at half-time about how we needed to look at what was happening around us and to react positively and with both character and intelligence to the flow of the game and it’s no coincidence that in a very marginal game we managed to get on the end of a couple of moments that might have gone either way.
“We’re really happy to have beaten them – it was a hard, hard game and they gave us a lot of problems and it might have gone either way right up until the end. But we’re happy to have finished with our first win at home in this campaign.”
Self-pressured
“Despite the wins versus Scotland and Wales, we felt there was a little bit of pressure on us, perhaps that we’d not hit the expectation of ourselves and those internal emotions start to put further pressure on us. We were really poor in that match against Italy, we fully accept that, and that gave us a real wake-up call, a chance to look out ourselves and our character. But tonight we played with the freedom that we wanted to show – the right attitude and the right character and heart, a tiny bit of fortune perhaps, and that’s ultimately why we won in this game,” he continued.
“Looking at the wider picture, there’s no doubt that Ireland have been the most consistent side and going into this game we didn’t know the result until after our warm-up. I think for England perhaps that freed them up a little to play with ambition knowing there was less pressure to win but more opportunity to play open rugby and not hide their attacking ability. But for France, it’s key that we stick to our systems and although we’re aware that the defensive system isn’t at its peak, our tries came because we kept to the things we have trained to deliver and also our opportunism and ability to react to marginal moments and we’re very happy about that.
“Is it a successful or a failed tournament? What’s good is that we have that strength of personality to continue to search for our goals. Yes, it’s a shame in terms of the quality of a couple of the performances and we are not happy to finish second, for sure. We have integrated new players into our systems and strategy and this is really positive for us. We are certainly not satisfied with the campaign, but in some ways we are happy with the way we’ve responded to the problems we’ve encountered on our journey.
“The key thing for France is that we know we have something to build on and that this campaign is not one where we discard the work that we’ve delivered. It’s about a trajectory and this is something we can carry with us for the future.”