French left mystified by tired display

An hour after their dismal afternoon in Paris had ended in the barely deserved relief of a 10-point win the French team were still slumped in their dressing room.

Steam rose from the showers while France's finest players again searched wearily for answers which, ultimately, would prove as elusive as their own form. As meaty men around Pieter de Villiers towelled themselves dry or, more often, scratched their heads in quiet bewilderment, the big French prop gave voice to the confused and downbeat mood.

"I wish we knew how to explain our performance," he said, "but it's not easy. We've spoken together and we've listened to our coach Bernard Laporte and we're still not quite sure what went wrong. It's strange - and it's disappointing.

"The build-up to the game went well and we had a fantastic week of preparation. We felt we were at last ready to show a new level of consistency. But it just didn't happen and we're still trying to work out why."

The opening half-hour to yesterday's deeply flawed game saw France at their most dire. The sustained brilliance they had produced in their last match, when outplaying the All Blacks 10 weeks ago in Marseille, gave way to a mediocrity that was almost shocking. The French were tentative, disorganised and curiously lacking in fire.

"We were really struggling," De Villiers added, "unlike any other match I've played before. There was a sense of fatigue about our play early on. We knew the Scots would try to play a fast-paced game but they weren't that quick; it was just that we had no gas in our step. We felt shattered when we came in at half-time. Bernard (Laporte) went crazy. He was pretty angry with us because we had been embarrassing."

Laporte said yesterday: "I always thought we would win the match, even when Scotland showed a lot of courage and came back at us. At least we held firm.

"If nothing else we showed we have the right character. We started off in a terrible fashion and the team could have collapsed. Certainly they were complaining of exhaustion.

"It's a mystery to me but in the weeks ahead we will get to the bottom of this fatigue. It hampered us today."

The local press were unimpressed. They had been here before, as France's bad day extended Les Bleus' miserable - cursed, according to some talk in the papers - relationship with the Stade de France. Before this win France had lost seven of their preceding eight games in Paris, their sole victory coming last April Fool's day over Italy.