Lievremont shows there is method to his madness

IRELAND V FRANCE: PROFILE OF MARC LIEVREMONT:WHAT ARE we to make of France under Marc Lièvremont? At first glance, les bleus would appear to be all over the place. They come into the 2009 Six Nations at Croke Park today with a 50-50 win-loss ratio from his first 10 games in charge, having used a scarcely credible 56 players, 25 of them newcomers to Test rugby, and from a club game that has never performed so badly in Europe. And yet, it could be there is method to all this apparently classical French madness, writes Gerry Thornley

By his own admission, Lièvremont came into this Six Nations impatient and frustrated - a mood probably reflected by the vast majority of people in French rugby. The French coach has been itching to have his team back on the pitch and is hoping his players produce much more of what he saw from them in last season's Six Nations than subsequently.

"I'm impatient," he said a week ago, "I'm in a hurry to see the players again. I'm less apprehensive than a year ago when it was necessary to rebuild a group."

At least Lièvremont has had a season's start on his Ireland counterpart and boy has he made the most of it. He had been appointed with almost indecent haste, in part as an antidote to Bernard Laporte and his Anglicised, more structured if more disciplined approach which had come up so painfully short in the Coupe du Monde on home soil. Indeed, he is known as the anti-Laporte.

The oldest of seven rugby playing brothers from Perpignan born to a military father and Catholic mother, they had a fairly strict upbringing. A grounded and level-headed man, one couldn't imagine him with high profile Laporte has assumed and since maintained as Minister for Sport.

Lièvremont, now 40, won 25 caps from 1995-99 as an unflashy, honest-toiling, hard-tackling blindside flanker, finishing his Test career as an ever-present backrower in the 1999 World Cup run to the final. His limited coaching experience entailed coaching the Biarritz colts and the French under-20s, before guiding Dax to promotion from Pro D2 with an inventive brand of rugby.

His assistants are his former French team-mate Émile N'Tamack and Didier Retière, who jointly coached France to victory in the Under21 World Cup two years ago, but in coaching terms they too are relatively callow.

Lièvremont had been a surprise choice ahead of more experienced candidates such as Philippe Saint-Andre and Fabien Galthié, in what was a parting gesture from the IRB-bound Bernard Lapasset, although Lièvremont was opposed by Serge Blanco.

Clearly backed, however, by influential figures in the FFR such as Pierre Villepreux and Jean-Claude Skrela, Lièvremont immediately sought to liberate les bleus. Only 11 of Laporte's 30-man squad were picked for last season's opener, and Lièvremont's first game as French coach saw debutant Julien Malzieu instinctively tap a penalty inside half-way en route to one of France's three tries in a 27-6 win in Murrayfield.

Vincent Clerc, with two tries, had been the game's outstanding player, yet was one of seven players demoted for the game against Ireland six days later. Alas, Malzieu was ruled out and Clerc came in to score another three tries. And so it went on, France using 34 players in their five games and routinely using all seven of their replacements in every game. Results appeared secondary to the great experiment of "rebuilding the group" and broadening the base, with the oft-mentioned 2011 World Cup in mind - an increasingly irritating feature of modern-day rugby.

It's patently obvious, too, that Lièvremont was not burdened with short-term objectives by his employers, who themselves also saw his tenure as a four-year, World Cup cycle. Seen as a man of honour with an almost disarming honesty towards the media, he is clearly a highly-principled coach, with a clear philosophy on how France should play, and the players appear keen to buy into it.

In what amounted to an open forum with L'Equipe journalists after last year's Six Nations, he gave a revealing insight into the philosophy that drives him.

"I think what we want to put in place has been understood, perhaps not by all, but by the vast majority. They can touch with their fingers the demands on their game physically, individual technique, the permanence of support and attitudes in contact.

"We told them that within their club systems there is a way of working on our weaknesses. This project is complicated because it demands a lot of automatic reactions but, at the same time, it is easy to explain.

"It's not constraining in the sense that there are only four or five periods of programmed play. I object to give manuals to players with 200 moves or line-out calls. There are passing principles which are relatively simple. Even for line-outs, you can vary the numbers while keeping the same calls. All that, I think, they've understood and it was interesting to immerse a large number of players. Even those who only played for a quarter of an hour.

"When we have a little more weapons, a more discerning kicking game and possession with better instinctive play, we will be capable of attacking from anywhere at all because we will have our reference points.

"Perhaps I am an idealist, but I think we'll tire the defence more than ourselves by endlessly generating uncertainty. What we want is not to send every ball to the wings, it's to know how to use every type of play to use every type of ball. The Welsh captain says it was the match against us which was the most tiring. The other teams too."

Lièvremont's frustrations also emanate from the increasing demands of the Top 14, which this season began seven weeks after Toulouse beat Clermont in the 2007/08 final in what was also, of course, a World Cup year.

Lièvremont was left with no alternative but to blood a further 11 players on the two-match tour to Australia, given no player from the domestic semi-finalists, Toulouse, Clermont, Stade Français and Perpignan, were available, and two predictably demoralising defeats followed.

Without central contracting, the physical well-being of his players is a constant source of angst, though the solutions are beyond his control. "A limited number of matches: reducing the number of clubs in the Top 14 by going down to 12? In any case there are not 14 clubs of a high standard, but I'm not the president of the League, with whom I get on very well, and it's not up to me."

Then there are the prevailing standards in the Top 14, where increasingly club owners are controlling transfer policy. Even last season there were clear signs Toulouse and Clermont were way ahead of the rest, and the constraints imposed by referees' applications of the crackdown at the breakdown and the ELVs, along with the relegation fight so many are embroiled in, has further clipped ambition.

Anyone watching the Stade Français-Perpignan championship match last week on Eurosport would have seen a classic illustration of this. Two of last season's four play-off contenders featured the two marquee names of the global game - Dan Carter and Juan Martin Hernandez - in opposing number 10 jerseys. Yet for the first 40 minutes especially, it was like watching paint dry as the two sides kicked the leather off the ball.

Even so, it would be easy and dangerous to read too much into their poor performances in Europe. As Kidney pointed out during the week, France still pick from 14 teams (as opposed to Ireland's four) and their poor showing in Europe will, if anything, have hurt them.

Having beaten Argentina and the Pacific Islands, France ought really to have beaten Australia in Paris and would have done so had David Skrela not missed five penalties out of seven. But perhaps it was a blessing they didn't, given the paucity of ambition in their performance, although Lièvremont and his coaching staff probably wouldn't have been too enthused by a win anyway judging by his subsequent pronouncements.

"In November, there were a lot of good things but I was divided between excitement at meeting everyone, going for the matches, and irritated by everything I didn't like, chiefly the last match against Australia (which they lost 18-13).

"I was frustrated by how little we created. On the attacking level, it was very poor. We lost because we didn't play, not because we played badly. We got rid of the ball, there was zero intent in the second half and that's not acceptable when you recognise the potential expressed in training or what one sees on the part of some in the Top 14. Between the excesses of the last tournament (the 2008 Six Nations) and the frustration of Australia, a fine balance had to be found."

And in every pronouncement it is also obvious that Lièvremont, his coaching staff and players alike feel they have short-changed themselves thus far.

"In 2008 we ended the year with a 50-50 ratio. Each game brought its share of satisfaction but there wasn't any completely satisfactory game," Lièvremont conceded, "and if I go back over the other matches, besides Australia, it has to be said of the other games too. Against the Pacific Islands, that was an orgy of disorder. Opposite Argentina, there was, instinctively, a lot of kicking because of the weather conditions, discipline and a good victory, but we couldn't be satisfied with what was on display.

"Against Argentina and Australia, there were almost zero opportunities in either game to score a try," he added. "That really gets to me. For a moment I put myself in the place of an unfortunate spectator in the stands, he must be saying to himself; 'what are they asking of the players? To beat up the ball?' "

Seeing teams failing to reproduce what they do in training on match day remains probably the single biggest frustration for coaches and, given the undoubted talent at his disposal, Lièvremont is no exception.

"The potential is there. You see it in training. Even if we looked more balanced in the autumn I'm ready to go back to the excesses of last year to give the players their confidence back. We have to get there. Beyond these assumed excesses the last tournament had given rise to a wide-ranging review, but the autumn saw a narrowing of the group (of players).

"In November we used 25 players, but we were in a schedule of three matches in three weeks. The tournament, it is different. There will be five meetings over seven weeks, with two back-to-backs, and also the risk of injuries with Top 14 matches programmed before two tournament games. So one can envisage that there will be more turnover of players."

However, Lièvremont's France have now moved into a distinct and settled second phase. After introducing 13 new players in last season's Six Nations and another 11 on the summer tour, in the autumn there was only the brilliant young Toulouse winger cum fullback Maxime Medard.

Clemont Poitrenaud, Florian Fritz and Lionel Beauxis are all appearing for the first time under Lièvremont today, but all are experienced internationals, who were unavailable last year primarily because of injury or the French Championship play-offs. In Lièvremont's squad of 30 for this Six Nations, there were no uncapped players.

"Time is passing and we'd have to choose based on evidence. We've already used 56 players in 2008 and France doesn't have 120 players capable of playing for the French team. But the door isn't closed on anyone and we're continuing to reflect globally. In the corps of players there are seven or eight today aged between 29 and 32, and so they will be between 32 and 35 at the next World Cup. No-one knows if they will last that long."

The same might be said of the coaching ticket, for win or lose, today not only marks the definitive end to the first year of their reign but also to their honeymoon period. The brickbats will start flying if they fall short. There are no injuries, no more experiments, no more excuses.

This, at last, is truly Lièvremont's France.

France under Lievremont

Played 10. Won 5. Lost 5.

v Scotland (a)won 27-6

v Ireland (h)won 26-21

v England (h)lost 13-24

v Italy (h)won 25-13

v Wales (a)lost 12-29

v Australia (a)lost 13-34

v Australia (a)lost 10-40

v Argentina (h)won 12-6

v Pacific Islands (h)won 42-17

v Australia (h)lost 13-18

Players used: 56

Debutants: 25