Now might be a good time to start buying some shares in the French. It was a bracingly chilly night on Australia’s south coast, and as France comfortably despatched the World Cup’s last African representatives there was a devastating coldness to their movements, the poise and purpose of a team beginning to move through the gears at just the right time.
Their quarter-final against the co-hosts in Brisbane on Saturday morning promises to be one of the defining games of this tournament, a tantalising collision of Aussie guts and French guile, a gourmet feast of titanic battles: Sam Kerr against Wendie Renard, Caitlin Foord against Ève Périsset, Eugénie Le Sommer against whoever has the misfortune of trying to work out where Eugénie Le Sommer is going.
