The tricolores waved, the lights flashed red, white and blue, and the Stade de France continued to pulsate. In the minutes after victory over Ireland, the French players strode towards the stands to lead their supporters in a Viking Clap. Through 80 enthralling Six Nations minutes the volume had barely dipped and yet the French support still had more to give. On the weekend of Saint Valentine in the city of love, this was a tale of a Paris public seduced by Fabien Galthie’s new romantics.
Plonked in the suburb of Saint-Denis away from the rugby heartlands of the south, the Stade de France crowd hasn’t always warmed to its rugby team, existing as it has in a state of malaise for so much of this century, supporters conveying an air of indifference even in the Six Nations cauldron. Not this year. The home side had been rocked, but the Stade de France rolled with them, producing a pyretic roar to reignite the pyrotechnics: Uini Atonio’s charge cleared the space for Cyril Baille to reach for the crucial score that eventually saw them back up their billing as Six Nations favourites.
