France dream of the past

Berbizier strives to temper pragmatism with the flair necessity of Fren ch sporting life Geoffrey Nicholson finds that panache presents a problem to a pocket-sized coach

It could have worked out better. On the morning of the match against Wales, L'Equipe magazine ran a series of portraits of the French players "as you have never seen them". That is, stripped to the waist to show their muscle, and staring straight at the camera to convey their mood.

The opening picture of the unblinking lock, Olivier Merle, was particularly impressive. When the captain, Philippe Saint-Andre, first saw it, he apparently exclaimed: "He looks like a fairground wrestler from the Thirties." At which the prop Christian Califano was reported to have chimed in: "Yes, he should be wearing a tiger-skin." This was a bit rich coming from someone who turned out to have a snarling lion tattooed on his right breast, but never mind.

Pierre Berbizier, the French coach, whose comments were being used to caption the photographs, said that Merle represented "strength, explosive strength".

It was an unfortunate coincidence, then, that by the next day Merle was being accused of head-butting Ricky Evans, so causing the Welsh prop to fall awkwardly beneath a ruck where he suffered a double fracture of the left leg. A French disciplinary committee later cleared Merle of dangerous play (although he has been dropped for the game against England), but the damage had been done, not least to Evans. It was not how Berbizier wanted his team's first home championship match of the season to be remembered.

In 1992, a year after he had retired as France's most-capped scrum-half (with 56 appearances), Berbizier was coaching the team. A year later his side, in the process of rebuilding after the 1991 World Cup, toured the newly respectable South Africa and gained the Test series by the narrowest possible margin - a 20-20 draw and an 18-17 win. Berbizier, relieved to have scraped over his first big hurdle, said: "Our mission from now on is to play rugby that people can dream about."

He didn't try to pretend that France had done that for more than a few consecutive minutes last weekend. It wasn't that the match itself was soured by the Merle incident, whose only immediate impact was on Evans himself. And the often capricious home supporters seemed happy enough with the result. France had won by a dozen points provided by the only two tries. A decent afternoon's work - but not a full one.

It was all very well for France to push the ball around like Italian footballers, imperceptibly working into position before springing the trap, but what would they do for an encore? Very little, it turned out. In the second half, with the wind at their backs, they added only penalty goals. And although Wales, with their resilient defence, could take some credit for that, the French became less sharp, less deft and rather boring.

If the crowd held their fire, Berbizier did not. He said that there had effectively been two French sides playing - the good and the bad - and only a side that kept its concentration on scoring tries throughout the game had any hope of beating England.

This is the essential philosophy of Berbizier, a slightly built career rugby man who, at 36, is only four years older than his gifted centre, Philippe Sella. A pleasant, ironic expression contrasts with a strong belief that the style he values so highly is the product not of undisciplined flair but of training and application. He also accepts that the balance of the side is a matter of compromise. The strength and bulk of Merle - 6ft 6in and nearly 20 stone - whom he admits to being a little rustre, or clod-hopping, allowed him the option of including a more dynamic 14-stone flanker such as Laurent Cabannes.

Nobody appreciates more keenly the balance a national coach must strike between politics and sport, between pleasing the people and placating the Federation. Berbizier has lived with these problems since the 1970s, when he played as a pocket-sized centrein the French youth team. To advance his international career he moved from centre and occasional full-back to scrum-half, and from the Lourdes club to Agen, in the back yard of the Federation president, Albert Ferrasse. He also became a state-employed rugby instructor.

He won his first cap against Scotland in 1981 only by displacing the popular hero Jerome Gallion, which provoked an outcry. And though he kept his place throughout a Grand Slam season, he reverted to being Gallion's understudy, and it was not until 1986 that he became a regular. So regular and so well respected, in fact, that he was named as a future national coach some years before he stopped playing..

Last summer's two wins in New Zealand strengthened Berbizier's position, but this is the critical year. His future will rest on how far he satisfies the French fans' twin appetites for success and glory. To win the World Cup with 15 clod-hoppers wouldn'tbe enough. The fans might cheer, but they wouldn't come back next season. France must do it or die with panache. Berbizier doesn't resent this: "The public is one of our criteria of success. Their demands are perfectly natural because the team has made people dream with that try they scored in Auckland last summer."

He won't accept that failure at Twickenham on Saturday would be irretrievable: "This team has already shown it can bounce back." But he believes that England, with Australia, are more advanced in their rugby development than France. Success against England is a standard against which the French have to measure themselves - especially in a World Cup year. "Every team wants to establish its place, to mark out its territory, before dreaming of conquering the world." France will want to win with distinction. No ifs or butts about it.