Laporte still too intent on defence

If the French can see any pattern at all thus far in this championship, it lies in the fact that each of the three matches to date has raised more questions than it has answered.

The coach Bernard Laporte - square of spectacles and intense of speech - looks no stranger to intellectual debate and Saturday's victory over Italy, salvaged from a mass of errors, leaves him with more conundrums to ponder.

Laporte has a team which is solid in defence but looks largely atrophied in attack, yet which still has an outside chance of winning the championship. He has an outhalf in Christophe Lamaison, who was retained solely for his kicking even though he found the posts with all the ease of Kenny Logan.

A revolutionary influx of youth to Les Bleus is impending, but thus far Laporte's most incisive player has been the 30-year-old Philippe Bernat-Salles, while the best attacking moves on Saturday centred around the 35-year-old Jean-Luc Sadourny. Called out of international retirement at the start of the week, this was a searing comeback.

"If he was 22, he'd be a certainty for the 2003 World Cup," was Laporte's verdict on the fullback, who scored France's opening try after 14 minutes, beating the Italian number 15 Christian Stoica to Lamaison's short chip.

Eleven minutes later he drew Stoica to set up Bernat-Salles for his third try of the tournament and his injury-time catch and carry, wrongfooting Denis Dallan after grabbing Diego Dominguez's poor chip, enabled the debutant Sebastien Bonetti to seal the French win.

This could and should have been a more decisive victory, so well did the French snuff out the Italian backs, who had less room for manoeuvre than there is among the elegantly-dressed evening crowds in Via del Corso. As well as having to work behind a scrum which was being shunted every way, Dominguez's partner at half-back Alessandro Troncon was ruthlessly targeted by his opposite number Fabien Galthie and the French flanker Olivier Magne.

It was left to the little maestro Dominguez, given a hero's welcome on his return, to salvage what he could. His kicking - a perfect four from four penalties, including one which bobbled off the post - kept the Italians in touch, before, almost inevitably, he was the one who brought them back into the game with 10 minutes remaining selling a perfect dummy, shimmying through the French wall and permitting Denis Dallan to time his chip-kick for the wing Massimiliano Persico.

At that point the French led 2319, but their tally should have been something near the 47 points shown on the scoreboard before it broke down. Lamaison's dire afternoon with the boot cost the French a possible 15 points. Indicative of a deeper malaise was the moment, four minutes into the second half, when Lamaison ran deep into the Italian 22, with three men in support and only one Italian in sight, but the move was fumbled.

" If we want to win matches the priority is not attack but defence," said Laporte afterwards.

Scorers: Italy: Perziano try, Dominguez conversion and four penalties; France: Sadourny, BernatSalles and Bonetti try each, Lamaison three conversions and three penalties.

ITALY: Stoica (Narbonne); Perziano, Pozzebon, M Dallan, D Dallan (all Treviso); Dominguez (Stade Francais), Troncon (Montferrand); Lo Cicero (Roma), Moscardi (Treviso, capt), Paoletti (La Rochelle), Visser, Gritti (both Treviso), Persico (Viadana), Bergamasco, Checchinato (both Treviso). Replacements: Properzi for Paoletti (47 mins), Queirolo for Troncon (67 mins).

FRANCE: Sadourny (Colomiers); Bernat-Salles, Bonetti (both Biarritz), Lombard, Dominici (both Stade Francais); Lamaison (Agen), Galthie (Colomiers); Califano (Toulouse), Ibanez (Castres), De Villiers (Stade Francais), Auradou (Stade Francais), Pelous (Toulouse, capt), Moni (Stade Francais), Magne (Montferrand), Juillet (Stade Francais). Replacements: Betsen (Biarritz) for Moni (h-t), Marconnet (Stade Francais) for Califano (53 mins).

Referee: C White (England).