France continue with their world cup struggles.
France top Romania in a very unconvincing manner and only secure the bonus point win after 70 minutes of play.
VIBE
Romania gets to a good start by absolutely dominating in the first scrum and earning a penalty from it. You could see it on their faces how important it was for them and ultimately for the game to remain competitive. The French settle for an easy three pointer early, but the Romanians back their scrum with a close range penalty. From the ensuing phases Romanian number 12 Florin Vlaicu crashes over just to be held up by Bernard le Roux. They still have the penalty to use and the man almost over nudges it over to even things up.
At this stage I was getting my hopes up for another SA-Japan, but it was not to be. Yes the Romanians were very competitive in the forwards, they were bullying the French at the breakdown, their scrum was solid and they even snatched two lineouts. Once France got their set-piece working Romania had no choice but infringe close to their own line and they conceded a man to the bin, soon enough Sofiane Guitone opened the try-scoring.
Yannick Nyanga scores an another well worked try for France and Vlaicu answers with a penalty so 17-6 at oranges.
To be honest I was waiting for France to put this one to bed after the YC but Romanians held strong as they did on the second half where France got some accuracy on their set-piece and breakdown. But then their handling started letting them down and it took 26 minutes of the second half for the first score when Guitone got a second meat-pie. In the last 10 minutes France ran a few tries to make the scoreboard look prettier and secure the bonus point.
INCIDENTS OF NOTE
The yellow for Romania was just a professional fault but felt very decisive at the moment as they conceded 14 points during it.
What was more remarkable is that the first try scored was very close to the touchline, but it was given without counselling the TMO. Craig Joubert was running touch and made the call to Peyper, you could hear Peyper say after the first replay on the big screen “Good call mate” hope we see more of these good calls from the sideline.
SHOULD I BOTHER WATCHING IT?
Well its world cup footy, of course you should! In all seriousness, it was a heroic effort for 65 minutes from the Romanians but there is nothing much more to see, if you insist, have you FF button ready.
