Conspiracy theorists sour entente cordiale

An English plot to subvert the Tricolours? Yes, say the French. Non, argues Steve Bale

The perfidies perpetrated by Albion have sent the French into a rare old lather about Saturday's match against England at Twickenham. The paranoia is pervasive, from the president of the French rugby federation in his pomp, to the team manager and coach,to the great sports daily, L'Equipe.

Olivier Merle head-butts Ricky Evans, who breaks a leg as he falls, and is dropped for Evans's pains. But is this a triumph of strict French discipline? Well no, actually it is a response to a vicious plot got up by the "English", players and press in cahoots.

As it was ever thus, it is not really such a rare lather after all, though it is certainly old. From the moment France began playing international rugby 89 years ago, they have been the odd one out, a non-anglophone island in an ocean of English-speakers.

Even the globalisation of the game has not alleviated their linguistic isolation; even the presence of the Ivory Coast - sorry, Cote d'Ivoire - among the qualifiers for the forthcoming World Cup in South Africa is only of marginal assistance. The French are, quite literally, misunderstood. And the French, quite clearly, misunderstand.

On the one hand, France are occupying the disciplinary moral high ground, a territory England forfeited when the 10 punches Tim Rodber rained into the face of Eastern Province's Simon Tremain were punished with a sending-off sufficient.

But the idea that, despite the best efforts which, pre-Merle, have seen players such as Abdel Benazzi and Olivier Roumat dropped for disciplinary reasons, there is a collective francophobia not only in England but everywhere else, is the most patent nonsense. In my experience, quite the reverse is the case.

What, then, was Bernard Lapasset, the federation president, thinking of when he said this after the disciplinary commission had cleared Merle? "Thankfully, the French committee does not read the English papers, otherwise there might have been another decision."

If the committee had indeed read the English papers, they would have found nothing remotely exceptionable. But French paranoia has become a self-fulfilling prophecy and, once Brian Moore is wheeled out for his annual wind-up, no doubt Lapasset will find it happening precisely as he feared.

"Let us be in no doubt," L'Equipe intoned, "that the British press will exploit the affair to fuel its favourite tactic against the Tricolours - hatred of the French." Thus have the French turned what was essentially a Franco-Welsh issue into an English conspiracy.

French rugby's "Anglo-Saxon" conspiracy theory goes back further but lately it has come to be personified by England because they have beaten France seven times in succession, and as often as not it is the pre-match psychology that has tilted the balance. "We must not fall into the trap of losing against England before playing them," Lapasset said, managing to sound as if he was doing exactly that.

In one way or another, it has been happening ever since France's inaugural England match of 1906, and when Merle complained that English journalists were trying to "perpetuate the Hundred Years' War" he might just as well have been referring to rugby in the 20th century as to the dynastic rivalries of the 14th and 15th.

France first played every one of the home countries, thereby creating the Five Nations' Championship, in 1910. The first blow-up came not with the English but with the Scots, who refused to host the scheduled 1914 match after the 1913 match at Parc des Princes had been preceded and accompanied by a riot as well as an assault on the English referee.

It was only the beginning. Although relations were resumed along with the Championship after the war, there were regular complaints about the foul play apparently inherent in French rugby and finally France were thrown out of the competition in 1931.

By way of a precursor, the 1930 game against Wales was one of the most brutal, the hostilities continuing off the pitch and into the evening. The next year the International Board, which in those days had four English members and two each from Wales, Ireland and Scotland, announced that France was to be expelled from the Championship, "owing to the unsatisfactory conditions of the game of Rugby Football in France unless and until we are satisfied that the control and conduct of the game has been placed on a satisfactory basis in all essentials".

The home unions' complaint also concerned professionalism. How, they wondered suspiciously, could a village, Quillan (pop 3,000), sustain a club strong enough to win the 1929 French title? The IB's distaste for the French Championship was such that the precondition for readmission was its abandonment.

It did not happen. In 1932, when a French delegation went cap in hand to London it was said they were not even offered a cup of tea and it was 1939, when the Second World War was imminent and solidarity therefore expedient, that the rift was healed, though it was not until the Five Nations began again in 1946 that the old fixtures were finally resumed.

Small wonder the French have let their antipathy fester. Australia, New Zealand and South Africa were admitted to the IB in 1948 but France, scandalously, had to wait until 1978. The connection is coincidental but since then nine Frenchmen - more than twice as many as any other nationality - have been sent off in internationals.

Jean-Pierre Garuet started it when Clive Norling dismissed him for eye-gouging against Ireland in 1984 but it is against perfidious Albion that the French most often lose their marbles. Even the coach, Daniel Dubroca, had to resign after accosting the referee when England had won the 1991 World Cup quarter-final.

Four months later Gregoire Lascube and the hysterical Vincent Moscato were sent off against England in the Five Nations. The response? Then as now, it was a vicious plot. "Whatever happens, one does not have the right to beat the English," Andre Frossard, the editor of Le Figaro, wrote on his front page. "It is the law of sport." So whatever happened to the English as gallant losers?