Another breathless, brilliant encounter to ridicule the idea that rugby union was somehow better in the old days. France won with a bonus point, Gaël Fickou’s last-minute try earning them the garnish and denying Scotland even the consolation of a point of their own. How the visitors would have been worth it, or indeed the full five.
Not that the full five do anything to change France’s place in the table. They stay in fourth, but now there are three teams on 10 points, five behind Ireland on maximum points at the top of the table. The French, having lost to Ireland already, now look to Scotland themselves and England, whom France play in the next round, to try to stop an Irish march to the title.
What a prospect Scotland’s next match – at home to Ireland – would have been, had they managed to ride the red card shown to Grant Gilchrist in the seventh minute and a 19-0 deficit at the end of the first quarter to complete the comeback. As it is, they pulled the score back to 25-21 with 12 minutes to go. France by then were also down to 14, after the red card shown to Mohamed Haouas in the 12th minute.
That rendered most of the match a 14-a-side contest – and it turns out they are pretty good, if the moaners do want to meddle further with the modern game. France had reacted to their first defeat in so long, last time out in Dublin, with a ferocious assault on the Scottish defence, which yielded a try for Romain Ntamack in the fifth minute, just before Gilchrist’s red.
Another deluded idea in rugby these days is that red cards will magic away head clashes. Here was the latest example of a 6ft 8in forward caught out by the modern game’s bewildering speed, only then to be subject to trial by freeze-frame analysis.
Gilchrist had never been shown a card in his life, so he is hardly a dirty player. He looked mortified and the rest of us prepared ourselves for yet another contest corrupted by this moronic red-card campaign, now more than six years old.
Sure enough, a minute later France struck again, this time a lightning counter, which was finished by Ethan Dumortier to put France 12-0 up. A long afternoon looked in prospect for Scotland then, but Haouas’s red a few minutes later evened up the numbers.
Haouas has seen cards before. He saw red against Scotland three years ago for a punch. Whether his head clash with Ben White round the fringes of a ruck close to the French line was deliberate only he will know, but if there were sane grounds for a red card in the match this was it. The referee, perhaps disconcerted by the earlier red he had been obliged to show, nearly went for yellow, but his assistants stepped in – and we had a game on again.
With the extra space, Scotland fancied their chances of moving the heavy France forwards around and they set about it. Alas, initial attempts were even more costly. Finn Russell forced a cut-out pass that was intercepted by Thomas Ramos for that 19-0 deficit.
For the next hour or so, it was more or less all Scotland. Huw Jones scored brilliantly in the second and third quarters, before Russell was worked over for Scotland’s third in the fourth. By then, it was as if the French knew only how to tackle, such was Scottish dominance. But everything had to be perfect for the final step to be taken, and a mistimed lineout in the last 10 minutes cost Scotland dear.
France returned to the attack for the final couple of minutes. A quickly taken penalty deep in Scotland territory paved the way for Fickou.
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“We probably produced our best rugby of the tournament,” said Gregor Townsend. “And didn’t win. I thought some of our play today was outstanding. A lot was effort-based, but there was high skill as well. And then there was resilience, to go a man down, to go points down and to come back. But really we’re disappointed. We’ll get so much out of that game.”
Ireland seem all but untouchable at the moment but there are three teams in pursuit now. Scotland will be the next to have a go at them. Do not rule them out.
