Whatever will they think of next? A French robot scrum machine that replicates how the Australian eight scrummage?
Unfortunately, René the Robot would be spending half the time with its console stuck in the turf crying out “Danger Benn Robinson!”
I wonder whether the Wallabies should develop one of their own? Perhaps we could call it Al the Android as it replicates Domingo, Servat and Mas rubbing our noses in la herbe.
It’d probably blow a Fuse and short circuit?
Robbie has been furiously spinning away this week about how hard done by we are at scrum time: “wrongly maligned” and “preconceived ideas” come to mind.
Get real coach, our scrum has been fucked since 2003.
Notwithstanding some occasional heroics that have provided us with, as it turns out, false hope, latterly it’s blown up in our faces again. Sacré bleu and merde!
This is how one journo described it: “The Australian scrum were at their appalling best in Florence.”
I’ve had enough of talking about the scrum but the issue just won’t go away. I think I predicted at the beginning of this tour that scrummaging issues will dog us throughout and I was right (for once).
An acceptance of this domin(go)ance, to which, with a gallic shrug of the shoulder, we seemed to have acquiesced, is just not good enough. A weak scrum flows through to other parts of our game.
Size does count but you may be surprised to know that the Frog pack is lighter than ours. Mais non, they don’t have liberté, égalité et fraternité on their mind as they lick their garlic-scented lips right at this moment….
As for illégalités in the front row, if the referee isn’t going to do something about them (not that this is the central cause of our problems), then perhaps we should?
Le Frog scrum, like Castro (no, not Fidel) and his fellow avantis, was another that got over the top of the Argentinian bajada last weekend. As I’ve said before, this is not to be sneezed at.
Speaking of sneezing, the weather forecast for Saturday is for scattered snow showers. There’s nothing quite like a White Christmas but I hope we don’t end up at the after-party blaming the conditions for another loss.
Les Bleus have made a couple of changes from the Argentinian win. They’ve got a very experienced and capable side, with a few youngsters mixed in.
They only missed one tackle in the entire game against Los Pumas, had a 100 per cent scrum win rate (the Argies lost three from five) and did a lot more with their possession, although tryscoring wasn’t the go due to the poor conditions.
(English translation) The 10 to 13 — Damo ‘Snail’ Trail, Yannick ‘The Juice’ Noah and O’Reilly Rogering — are big guys, all in excess of 100kg, and will provide some defensive challenge for the Wallabies. Rogering played at outside centre last week and was a success, and there’s pace in the back three.
As for the pack, Harry Dorky has been dropped for Flatulence Ougadouga, and forwards to watch out for are Sea Bass Cheval, Terry Desultory, Nick Mallett and Bill Serviette.
According to their coach, Desultory and Ougadouga are “targeting” QC. I guess the mercurial Sea Bass will be angling to boondoggle him hook, line and sinker.
For the Wallabies, there are only a couple of changes from last week. As anticipated, Will Genia is back from injury and JO’C from Australia, as Folies Burgo and Lakkie Turner drop back to the reserves. Scott Higginbotham gets a chance from the bench in place of Matt Hodgson.
A failure in this match will equate to a failed Spring Tour. And to think it all started so well. Not that it’s been a complete disaster, but it’s hardly en rage succès.
Scrummaging is not the be-all and end-all of everything, but it is our most visible and exposed vulnerability — no, weakness.
In an area that is fundamental to the game and an expression of manliness, we consistently fail to live up to our supposed ranking. It’s a fucking embarrassment.
At the moment I think the Wallabies have their eye more on Charles de Gaulle and the beach rather than the freezing and les misérables Stade de France. I certainly have….
Lance says: “I think the Frenchies will have an advantage in the forwards and Biarritz’s Traille will be too wily for us. France by 7 but allez Sir Les Pattersons .”
Wallabies:
15 Kurtley Beale, 14 James O’Connor, 13 Adam Ashley-Cooper, 12 Berrick Barnes, 11 Drew Mitchell, 10 Quade Cooper, 9 Will Genia, 8 Ben McCalman, 7 David Pocock, 6 Rocky Elsom (c), 5 Nathan Sharpe, 4 Rob Simmons, 3 Ben Alexander, 2 Stephen Moore, 1 James Slipper.
Reserves: 16 Tatafu Polota-Nau, 17 Benn Robinson, 18 Mark Chisholm, 19 Scott Higginbotham, 20 Luke Burgess, 21 Matt Giteau, 22 Lachie Turner.
Les Blues:
15 Jerome Porical, 14 Yoann Huget, 13 Aurelien Rougerie, 12 Yannick Jauzion, 11 Alexis Palisson, 10 Damien Traille, 9 Morgan Parra, 8 Sebastien Chabal, 7 Fulgence Ouedraogo, 6 Thierry Dusautoir (captain), 5 Lionel Nallet, 4 Julien Pierre, 3 Nicolas Mas, 2 William Servat, 1 Thomas Domingo.
Reserves: 16 Guilhem Guirado, 17 Jerome Schuster, 18 Jerome Thion, 19 Julien Bonnaire, 20 Dimitri Yachvili, 21 Fabrice Estebanez, 22 Marc Andreu.
Saturday, 27 November
Stade de France, Paris
8.45pm (6.45am, Sun 28 November, AEDT).
Referee: Bryce Lawrence
