Post game press conference – FRA v IRE – Guy Noves and Guilhem Guirado
What do you think about this win, which is the start of a new era?
GN: Like last week, it feels good. But like last week, what I was interested in is the content of the game, not just the win in itself. Winning is always tasty, especially when it’s a scrappy, tough one to get. But the content is still a bit annoying to me, and I think the boys felt that at halftime. However, their behavior from the 30th to the last minute makes me feel like, if we add that to the few sequences we produced last week, we are on the right path.
Guy, this victory is especially yours, with your coaching strategy…
GN: I honestly don’t want to hear anything like that. This win belongs to the whole squad and staff, with all the hard work everyone put in during the last 10 days. We won, and you could say this is the victory of strategy, had we lost and you would have said the strategy was bad. I have enough experience to know that it may have been a factor, but it could also have bounced right back in our faces. What I want to say, is that we all felt like we had had a great week of training, with a good review and reassessment of what had been done the week before. I told the boys during the week that we felt they were in there, focused, involved. All in all, the efficiency of the players coming on and off showed massive solidarity in the squad. Those young kids, who were fragile last week, produced a huge performance today.
What did you need to change in terms of content at halftime?
GN: We didn’t change the content, but we did see that we were making too many mistakes, a knock on here, a penalty in the scrum there, another penalty after a lineout. We couldn’t play our game and were trying to endure through Ireland’s phases. I told the boys, half jokingly, that in a way they had put themselves in a perfect situation by abandoning possession for 30 minutes, since we wanted to work on our defense. They probably put too much pressure on themselves, whereas it was just a rugby game. You can win or lose, no one is going to die. If you want to compete, you need to let loose. This team will win games, lose others, but you can’t give possession back to your opponent. This is pretty much what I said at halftime, although I felt a great eagerness to compete, to dominate. I think the victory was decided by the boys’ and the captain’s decisions, especially when they chose to go to touch instead of kicking for three when we were down 9-3. They felt that they were getting the momentum back, and we ended up scoring a great try. This win belongs to the players more than the staff.
What role did the scrum play in this victory?
GG: It is just part of the game, one among others, but it did allow us to tighten their defense which opened a gap for us to score a try. It came after 4 scrums, we were tired and the backs to advantage of that to score. I didn’t see it but I congratulated them anyway.
GN: The scrum was absolutely crucial at that time of the game. There were a few successive scrums, and we know that at some point, the ref will have to make a decision. He struggled to do so, we were expecting a yellow card or something else. Eventually we got the ball and were able to exploit it. I do feel like the pack work took a toll and tilted the game in our favor.
We saw the boys celebrate after the try, talk in a circle after the end of the game. Do you feel like you just experienced important moments in the writing of the squad’s history?
GG: We felt the massive support of the fans, which allowed us to go the extra yard, to be stronger in the second half. Then that try came and rewarded the hard work put in by the 23 players.
GN: I wasn’t in the circle therefore I don’t know what was said! A win like this comes after really hard work, and t boys deserve to celebrate. But not only them, Jeff, Yannick, the physios, the video analysts. I am new to this, and I realise that there is a whole world of people working hard, some people losing their hair over it. So getting a result like this one, and seeing those young boys so happy, it all feels like a job well done. As for writing our history, we will know in a few weeks. Let’s all keep our feet square on the ground, because our next opponent will be an extremely strong one.
You only missed 5 tackles during the game. Do you think it discouraged the Irish little by little?
GG: We have to set things straight after our performance last week, and the conditions tonight allowed us to rush faster and hit harder in defense. But there are always things you can improve, and we need to keep working on the basics. GN: I want to take a minute to congratulate the Irish. We have been talking about our performance, but this performance is only interesting because we produced it against an amazing team. I want to thank the Irish a congratulate them for the fight they put up today.
