Domestic competition restricts Laporte's international ambition

Bernard Laporte, the Grand-Slam winning coach of the French national team, is not in much of a Grand Slam mood at the moment. In fact, he is just a little fromaged off. While England, the Tricolores' first opponents in this season's Six Nations' Championship, have been training together on a regular basis since the Rugby Football Union hammered out a player access deal with the Premiership clubs last autumn, Laporte has been restricted to two squad sessions since the end of November – something of a bad joke, in his view.

"It is impossible to get the players to focus all their energies on the Six Nations because they have commitments with their clubs," he said yesterday. "Rugby is a mixture of individual and team moves. If one player makes a mistake, the whole team is punished." In other words, the Six Nations champions and strong contenders for the World Cup in Australia later this year will fall well short of potential in both tournaments unless they spend some quality time together.

Player release is every bit as huge a bone of contention in France now as it was in England towards the end of last season, when Clive Woodward went public on his frustrations over access and warned that the red rose army would struggle to make an impact on the World Cup without a meaningful agreement with the élite clubs. Laporte now has at his disposal a beautifully equipped, state-of-the-art training centre at Marcoussis. What he does not have – at least, nowhere near frequently enough – is a squad.

The domestic championship is at the very centre of the rugby soul on the far side of the Channel: while the likes of Toulouse and Stade Français are undeniably ambitious on the European front, most of their rivals are wholly obsessed with their own tournament. Indeed, Agen effectively knocked themselves out of last season's Parker Pen Shield by throwing a match at Ebbw Vale, purely because they wanted to concentrate on internal affairs.

Two more rounds of championship rugby are scheduled before the French visit Twickenham on 15 February, and they contain some humdingers: Toulouse versus Pau, Stade Français against Montferrand, Agen versus Perpignan. A substantial proportion of Laporte's squad will be involved in those matches and until they are done with, some of the most influential players in the northern hemisphere – De Villiers, Harinordoquy, Magne, Galthié, Traille and Rougerie, to name but half a dozen – will be distracted from any thought of Six Nations business. Which can only be good news for England.

In Italy, the national coach John Kirwan has cut his Six Nations squad to 27 by omitting five players, three of whom – the full-back Gert Peens, the wing Nicola Mazzucato and the centre Matteo Mazzantini – featured against England in Rome last April. Another midfielder, Matteo Barbini of Padova, is out of commission after fracturing his shin during a club match at the weekend. However, the experienced Calvisano prop Giampiero de Carli, has been drafted in.

Domestically, Gloucester have joined Leicester, their Powergen Cup semi-final opponents, in asking the Rugby Football Union to move the tie on 1 March from Franklin's Gardens in Northampton. "We aren't asking for a better stadium, just one with a bigger capacity," the managing director, Ken Nottage, said. "Both clubs have large followings and quite a number of neutrals would also like to see the match. We are inquiring whether a bigger ground might be available for the occasion."

If Franklin's Gardens, which holds 12,500, loses the game, it could go to the Madejski Stadium in Reading, which has a capacity of 24,200.