Pyrotechnics did for Ireland in Dublin last Saturday and the prosaic intermingled with a little panache was enough for France to notch up several records in dispatching Scotland on Saturday night to secure a seventh Six nations title.
France were solid rather than spectacular during the first-half.
Yoram Moefana went over the line 17 minutes into the encounter at the Stade de France after a Thomas Ramos penalty had opened the scoring.
Ramos added the two points for the conversion to take his tally up to five points and a merited 10-0 lead.
But midway through the half, Ramos petulantly pushed Scotland scrum-half Ben White over Peato Mauvaka and Mauvaka promptly got up and ploughed into White.
His flash of pique was punished with a yellow card and a penalty. Finn Russell converted it to get Scotland going.
Record
In extending France's lead to 13-3, Ramos became France’s all-time top points scorer with 438 points eclipsing Frédéric Michalak's high of 436 points between 2001 and 2015.
But the elation was short-lived.
Darcy Graham danced his way through the France defence to register Scotland’s first try and suggest a contest at 13-10 after Russell’s conversion.
Jean-Baptiste Gros’ yellow card and a penalty gave Russell the chance to level and the skipper obliged.
But Ramos added another penalty to give France a 16-13 half-time lead.
Following the break, France re-established a 10-point lead on the counterattack. Romain Ntamack broke clear and set up Louis Bielle-Biarrey for his eighth try of the 2025 campaign and a championship record.
Fight
Another Russell penalty after 51 minutes kept Scotland in touch at 23-16 but the game was effectively over and the championship sealed when Ramos clocked up another seven points with a try and conversion to take the game away from Scotland at 30-16.
Tactfully, the vast majority of the 78,000 fans in the Stade de France waited until the hour before unleashing the first Marseillaise of the encounter as the partisans sensed a first six Nations title since 2022.
Moefana obliged the yearning with his second of the night to eradicate any hope of a Scottish recovery.
"It was a difficult match," France head coach Fabien Galthié told French broadcaster France 2.
"We didn't quite know how to handle it at the start. Scotland were playing without pressure and we were quite nervous.
"At half-time, I told the players they could do better. They were just too timid and that was because of what was on the line. But they knew what they had to do and they did it."
As well as Ramos taking sole charge of France's points record with 450 and counting, the team notched up a Six Nations tournament high of 30 tries to surpass the 29 scored by England during their surge to the 2001 crown.
"Obviously we play to win titles," Ramos told France 2. "It's a relief to win the Six Nations after seeing Ireland lift it a couple of times."
