England all at sea as French storm scuppers their hopes

FAITH restored. It was a luminous neon-lit advertisement for Five Nations rugby. The swanky new yuppie professionals were, in the end, taught a thing or three and humbled by the good old boys who've always known the score.

Twickenham was stunned - the braying shires' throng in waxed or tweedy jackets had their presumptive guffaws rammed back down their throats - but not half as stunned as the England team. Twickenham looked like a battlefield: the men in white dotted, prone, beaten and bloodied, about the field, unable to comprehend the dramatic turn of events; their conquerors standing tall above them in an ecstatic series of embracing little Gallic wigwams that looked like they had come straight out of an Asterix comic. They came, they saw, they conquered.

The French were stunned too.

At half-time they were so many scattered skittles rolling pointlessly about. England had sustained a rollicking showcase performance for which, for once, there were no exactly precise native phrases - namely ezprit de corps and joie de vivre. For France, ditto - the good, English word "curtains" springs to mind.

England's heady dance continued and two more goals swirled England's skirts to a surely, unassailable lead.

And yet, noticeably at halftime, France had come early from their interval orange-sucking huddle and were almost lined up and ready before the referee's whistle had stirred England from their close-embracing midfield parley.

But one dismissed the symbol - already-beaten boxers are often first up before the bell as a last, despairing token of defiance.

But that collective gesture had, according to captain Abdel Benazzi, been potently positive: "pas probleme, our confidence at half-time was wholly in place. England could still disintegrate if we kept composure and integrity. Et certainment, at 20-6 we could see they had won. We saw it in their eyes, by their whole demeanour - and that made us say: `This is our time'. And so it was".

At four o'clock with 25 minutes left, France pitched camp inside the England 22. They were scarcely to leave it.

There were three big chances for England to make the match and the Grand Slam safe. The breathtaking attackers of only a snatch of time before were now defending with heroic grit; but surely it was but a passing phase, a last gasp by the blue shirts?

No, it was much more. England could not cope with being attacked in such relentless waves. What Europeans have done that in aeons? Home and dry and dominant... then their haughty psyches all of a sudden pricked and unravelling at speed.

What to do? Just bomb kicks into the wind and over faraway touchlines. Two of those kicks they unforgivably plonked straight down the throat of that silkily-cunning counter-attacker Jean-Luc Sadourny, who returned with knobs on, revelling in the "after you, Claude" naivety of the gifts. The third, a penalty, did find touch - and England wantonly surrendered their own line-out to the mountainous (and mountainously impressive) Olivier Merle.

A blink, and it was lost and won. Suddenly, it was a gale of different sorts from across the Channel. England tackled on. They could only bale out so much water. Nobody steadied the ship, wound down sails, dropped anchor, got a grip in the wheelhouse, or on the tiller. Shipwreck.

As the French's raucous songs reverberated across the corridor and over and under the locked door of the coffin-quiet England dressing-room, captain Phil De Glanville emerged nobly to do his best to pick up the shattered fragments.

There were, he said, as many positives about the first act as there were negatives about the second and humbling finale. But his eyes kept glazing over, and the articulate and agreed upon upbeat sentences darted at mitigating asides - "mentaly we switched off"... "we should have gone for the kill" ... "we weren't physically tired at all, just psychologically drained".

The timeless way that this ever-glorious and passing pageant conducts us out of dark midwinter each year into the sparkly promise of spring-time, has every Celt the world over this morning still raising triple upon triple of cheers for France's resplendent rally - a soothing, consoling balm for Ireland's injured spirits.

A tumultuous coronation for Les Bleus will be staged at Parc des Princes in 12 days when they take on the Scots. Whatever happens there, Celts everywhere are looking to Wales to take over where France, so voluptuously, left off.