Retière blames referee

France's forwards coach Didier Retière believes his team were victims of their “reputation” for poor scrumming and “hasty” refereeing decisions in Saturday's 24-13 home defeat to England.

France's forwards coach Didier Retière believes his team were victims of their “reputation” for poor scrumming and “hasty” refereeing decisions in Saturday's 24-13 home defeat to England.

Despite losing consecutive games against England at the Stade de France, Retière says he is satisfied with the progress made by his pack. However, he thought that some of referee Steve Walsh's decisions were a little severe.

“The scrum is always a phase that incites a lot of debate. When a scrum collapses, it's sometimes difficult to say who caused it. We can rue the somewhat hasty decisions made by the referee. We feel that it was all orientated in our direction,” Retière told lesite.

“Unfortunately, a certain reputation has been constructed around our scrum since the start of the tournament. It's going to be very difficult for us to change our image with regards to the refereeing. It'll need a lot of work.”

Some of Les Bleus' players have spoken of slating that could have influenced the referee, and their coach agrees.

“Of course. Information circulates. The referee was on the lookout to see whether the contest was fair. He certainly had some preconceived ideas,” he said.

Retière was full of praise for his pack for their work in loose play, the mauls and the line-outs.

He also thought that they had made loads of progress in the scrums and that the side's youngsters had repaid the coaching staff's confidence in them with a excellent performance.

“[The forwards] really raised their game in the scrums. We had a scrum five metres out against us at the end of the match that was very good,” he said.

“There really were some positives. We must continue to work on our kick-offs and gain a bit more confidence.

“We've made progress again. We congratulated the players for their enterprise and courage. It's clear that we still need to make some adjustments, we need to be more accurate and more flexible.

“We know that we're taking a bit of an extreme position with our willingness to play attacking rugby. Against England, it was complicated but this construction phase is very beneficial.

“Nevertheless we still scored a try in a very interesting period of play. All that will help us progress.

“[The youngsters] raised their game to the level of their team-mates. We've known them for a long time and we really had confidence in them. It's true that there was a little bit of uncertainty in such a big match.

“They played their part and were really quite good, even exceptional considering their [lack of] experience.”

France's winning streak may have come to an end but Retière has not changed his song and insists that the game must be seen in it's broader context.

“We hate losing. Obviously we want to do as well as possible in the tournament but without losing sight of our medium-term project of construction.

“We're going to continue to rotate the players and move forward in terms of our style. We need the group to mature via the new departure that we've put in place since the start of the tournament.”