Stuart Bathgate: French must rekindle missing spark to pull off shock against hosts

OF THE six Rugby World Cup finals to date, only two have been genuine cliff-hangers.

It would be marvellous if Sunday’s match between New Zealand and France were to make it three, but even the most fervent of Francophiles must regard that as a long shot, such is the apparent superiority of the host nation.

The two truly dramatic finals were in 1995 and 2003. In the first, a Joel Stransky drop goal gave South Africa a 15-12 victory over the All Blacks after extra time. Eight years later the script was almost identical, as Jonny Wilkinson’s drop goal, again in extra time, gave England a 20-17 win over Australia.

Will we see anything approaching such edge-of-the-seat excitement this time? Will Morgan Parra or Piri Weepu pop up to supply the coup de grace after both teams have battered each other to a standstill? Or will the similarity be between this final and the climax of the inaugural tournament in 1987, won 29-9 by New Zealand against French opponents whose strength had been sapped by an epic semi-final win over Australia?

The margin of victory should be closer to that first final than to the other two, but this time there seems little risk that France will still be exhausted from their exertions in the previous match. In their semi-final win against Wales on Saturday they looked intent on expending only as much energy as was required for victory, which duly came when they prevailed 9-8.

Welsh supporters will remain convinced for ever more that the early dismissal of their captain, Sam Warburton, was a terminal blow to their hopes of reaching the final for the first time. But referee Alain Rolland’s action probably also had a harmful effect on the French, nudging them into a conservative mind-set. Slight underdogs beforehand, they became favourites the moment Warburton saw red, and they did not respond well to that pressure.

The good news for those French players of suspect temperament – which means just about all of them, with the exceptions of hooker William Servat and captain and blindside Thierry Dusautoir – is that there is no chance of their being made favourites for this one. The All Blacks are 1/9 with some bookmakers, a reflection not only of the form they have shown in general throughout the tournament, but more specifically of the ease with which they beat France in their Pool A game.

True, that 37-17 win was over an understrength French side, whose coach, Marc Lievremont, had decided to omit Servat and Imanol Harinordoquy from his starting line-up. And it was a match which France could afford to lose – indeed, they lost their next game too, against Tonga, and still made it through to the knockout stages.

But, while a one-off game is different from a pool match and France can be expected to put in a little more effort this time, it is a tall order all the same to expect them to make serious inroads into that 20-point margin. Such a gap is surely too big for any team to bridge in a matter of weeks, as England found out four years ago. Humiliated 36-0 by the Springboks in their second pool game, the defending champions clawed back a great deal of their self-respect when they lost a tryless final 15-6.

At least some of the French squad must feel that they have already achieved a lot by reaching the final. Even subconsciously, they will be preparing themselves for an honourable defeat.

If he wants to prevent his players from succumbing to that seductive line of thinking, what must Lievremont do? For a start, he should tell the inveterate Anglophobe Harinordoquy that those men in black jerseys he will face are actually England in their change strips. The No 8 was immense against the English in the quarter-final, but neither he nor any of his colleagues approached that level of play against Wales.

More seriously, Lievremont has to encourage his players to display the attacking flair which was so disappointingly absent on Saturday. New Zealand’s defence was awe-inspiring yesterday, especially in the dying minutes when, a man down after Sonny Bill Williams’ sin-binning, they still prevented the Australians from crossing their line. But awe-inspiring is not the same as unbeatable.

Where the Wallabies had only one player, the quixotic Quade Cooper, who was elusive enough to truly trouble the All Blacks defence, the French have several. Parra and Maxime Medard, in particular, play as if they have twitch fibres in their brains, so rapid is their ability to initiate an unpredictable move.

If those two get everything right, and their colleagues perform every basic task to a high degree of excellence, France have a chance of pulling off the most stunning upset in the history of the competition. Anything less, and defeat with honour will be the height of their ambition.