France coach Fabien Galthie was left in tears on Saturday, almost too emotional to speak after his team’s 53-10 humiliation of England in a stunning Six Nations match.
Flanker Francois Cros, a key cog to a dominant French side alongside backrow teammates Gregory Alldritt and Charles Ollivon, hailed the victory in the cauldron that is Twickenham, where France had not won in 16 years.
“It’s the only stadium in Europe where we haven’t won since Fabien Galthie took over,” Cros said of the head coach who took charge of Les Bleus after the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan.
Photo: AFP
The seven-try victory was England’s heaviest home defeat of all time, and third ever anywhere.
“It’s important for us to write our history, and try to win everywhere and against everybody,” Cros said. “It’s another step tonight.”
French daily sports newspaper L’Equipe had mocked up Galthie as Indiana Jones on its front page on Saturday, with the headline “Galthie with Les Bleus at the Temple of Doom” in a nod to the Steven Spielberg film featuring Harrison Ford as Jones.
However, Twickenham did not prove to be the trap for Galthie as it had been over the past almost-two decades for his predecessors.
However, France hooker Julien Marchand said a record score on English soil had not been the goal.
“You always see the score, and obviously we’re chuffed when it goes like that,” Marchand said. “We know the importance of points difference for the culmination of the Six Nations.”
“Even if the score is big, we’ll always try to regroup, focus and continue to work. We had a great match, we’re happy with the record score, but it wasn’t the goal. That was putting out a good performance,” he said.
Full-back Thomas Ramos, named man-of-the-match for his 23-point display, including a scintillating opening try, said the result was a huge confidence booster.
“It’s possibly one of our best attacking games for a long, long time,” he said. “It’s important because it shows that we can produce the goods at a high level.”
An emotional Galthie said the victory had brought about “a lot of joy, pleasure, emotion.”
“It’s our 34th match, and we wanted to produce a match like that,” the former France scrumhalf and skipper said. “It’s a perfect day in Twickenham, it’s rare.”
Galthie was not too keen on looking ahead to the Sept. 8 to Oct. 28 Rugby World Cup that France are hosting.
“Tonight, we’ll head back to the hotel and grab a beer. Our goal is to win the Six Nations,” he said. “We’ve learned a lot with each defeat. It was important for us to play this game, despite our loss to Ireland [in their Six Nations opener], to win it... The World Cup is the next competition.”
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