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After a up and down Six Nations rugby campaign, France settled for a not too impressive middle of the table finish.  The results have Rugby Rugby’s Howard Johnson asking if Lievremont is the right person with his ‘shrug of the Gallic shoulders’ attitude.

By Howard Johnson

Well it was the typical curate’s egg of a Six Nations for our French friends. A decent showing in defeat in Ireland, a thoroughly laboured home win against Scotland, a terrific and spirited win at the Stade de France against Wales, a humiliating “slap in the face”, as Head Coach Marc Lievremont so brilliantly called the walloping at Twickenham against us lot, and a tonking of the hapless Italians to round it all off.

Can anybody work out the French rugby mentality? I know that I can’t. How do you explain the irritating inconsistencies? If Martin Johnson were in charge of Les Bleus the poor bloke would be utterly volcanic in his frustration. Marc Lievremont, being French, has been way more phlegmatic. It was almost with a visible shrug of his Gallic shoulders that he admitted that the beating at the hands of the English was “incomprehensible”.

Lievremont doesn’t inspire much in me. While I suspect I’d happily run into a brick wall at full tilt for Johnson (mainly out of fear of what would happen to me if I didn’t!), I’m not sure I’d be that bothered if I happened to irritate or upset the French boss. He seems a bit of shrugger to me, someone who takes the up and downs in his stride and with exactly the same low-key level of emotional response. That’s probably a jolly good thing in real life. But the Six Nations isn’t real life as we know it. It’s a special tournament that relies on a bit of madness from its major participants to light the fires of public imagination. And it may be this that has seen rumblings of discontent starting to take root in France with regard to Lievremont. The fella just seems to be too much of a cold fish to engage the French rugby public. And with French football boss Raymond Domenech having already cornered that particular market over here, it’s hard to see from the outside just what Lievremont has to offer.

Now of course behind the scenes the fella might be the greatest technical thinker the game has ever seen, though after the Twickenham capitulation somehow I doubt it. But it’s leaders of men who inspire our affection in sports managers and I’m not the only who doesn’t really see Lievremont in that way.

Lievremont himself says he still believes in his group, but he also admits he would have liked to have known a bit more about his players just two and a half months away from a gruelling summer tour to New Zealand and Australia. Well I think I can tell him what I know about his players with regards to that tour. They will lose. But that’s pretty much always the case with these fatuous summer tours at the end of a long, hard season. There’s no appetite for them. What Lievremont should really be worrying about is how much progress he can make with these guys by 2011, when the real action, the World Cup, starts. And on that one I really don’t think I can help him…

HAVE YOUR SAY…
Is Lievremont the right man for the job?  Do you agree with Johnson that he might not have the spine to motivate the players and get the job of winning silver accomplished?  Send your opinions to Rugby Rugby by CLICKING HERE.

This article first appeared in Rugby Times and is re-printed with permission from the magazine.