Just like in 1798, French fail to arrive en masse

LIKE THEIR compatriots in 1798, the French are coming, but in not the numbers we might have expected.

About 6,000 will be at tonight’s World Cup play-off in Croke Park, fewer than usually attend the Six Nations game between Ireland and France in Dublin.

The French are inveterate rugby fans but lukewarm football supporters, and have sent back 1,000 tickets for tonight’s game despite its huge significance.

“The only time French fans have ever travelled was to Euro 2000 after they won the World Cup,” said sportswriter Arnaud Ramsay, who noted that there were more French journalists, 40 in all, than fans on an Aer Lingus flight from Paris yesterday.

The relatively small band of French supporters does include, though, the man most people regard as France’s No 1 fan.

Clement Tomaszewski, better known as Clement d’Antibes after his native town, has been to 146 French games, which includes five World Cups.

He has travelled to Ireland without his constant companion, the cockerel Balthazar, who has the flu.

Tomaszewksi was in Ireland in September 2005 when a moment of brilliance from Thierry Henry settled a tight World Cup qualifier.

He is confident that the French team has found a vein of form in their last two matches against Austria (won 3-1) and the Faroe Islands (0-5) which will see them through the Irish matches.

He describes the Irish players as “bûcherons”, which means woodcutters or, as fellow French supporter Cécile Jail helpfully translates, “the men in the forest who cut down trees”.

“He means it as a compliment, not a joke,” she explains. “He says the Irish players are strong physically and mentally.”

Many of the French are travelling with as much trepidation as hope. “We are confident to win because if you take the players one by one we are better, but you have the better coach,” said fan Arnaud Louer. It is a common sentiment among French fans.

He points to Thursday’s front-page headline in the French sports newspaper L’Équipe which features a photograph of French coach Raymond Domenech superimposed on the Irish line-up and the headline “Leur chance, c’est lui” – which translates: he is their bit of luck.

Like a lot of French fans he sees France’s progression to the World Cup final in 2006 as a reflection on the players who got them there rather than Domenech.

His friend and fellow supporter Frédéric Crutsch is equally sanguine about the prospects of Les Bleus winning tonight. “Fifty, fifty,” he says.

The French may be the hottest of favourites to progress to the World Cup finals but the Irish have been the most enthusiastic supporters.

In contrast to general French indifference, there were 20,000 applications for Ireland’s allocation of 8,500 tickets for Wednesday’s away leg in Paris.

Tonight’s match, which has a capacity of 76,000, is sold out. The last 1,000 tickets, returned by the French, were sold in minutes on Ticketmaster yesterday.