Les Bleues borders on the feat in England – Liberation

Plurged by a calamitous match start, the Bleues finally finished very historic victory against England (43-42), their bane, which won its seventh consecutive sixt nations in Twickenham.

Four months from the World Cup in England (August 22 – September 27), whose all powerful RED Roses are the favorites, the Blue has once again struggled with their glass ceiling, upgraded by the power and speed of the numbers a world in the first period, before conceding a frustrating defeat.

Since 2018, the year of the last French victory against England and the last title of the Bleues in the tournament, the scenarios of the meetings change but the conclusion remains the same in front of the best nation in the world.

This is the fifteenth defeat in a row against the Red Roses, the seventh in the tournament. As in the last four editions, where the final of the tournament opposed the two teams, the Bleues could not overthrow the match against the English, which have not lost since the World Cup final in 2022, then reduced to 14 against New Zealand.

After the start of a laborious tournament, especially last week in Parma where the players of David Ortiz and Gaëlle Mignot struggled to beat Italy (34-21), the return to reality was tough in Twickenham, where the Blue never led to the score.

As in 2023, where the French women had taken the lightning of English offensives with a 33-0 collected in the first period, the teammates of the Manae Feleu and Marine Household captains first seemed completely out of date by the pace and the precision of the English attacks.

Far from being as monolithic as we want to describe them, the teammates of the third line and Captain Zoe Aldcroft knocked out the Blue with five tests in around twenty minutes, signed Dow (4), Sing (8, 18), Atkin-Davies (12) and Macdonald (23).

Without solution in the face of the power of the English worn balloons, abused in the ground play, and regularly speeded by the playing of the title holders of the title, the French people almost sank, reduced to 14 after a yellow card inflicted on the right pillar Assia Khalfaoui (23rd) and carried out 31 to 7.

However, they hung on, thanks to a reversal of Gabrielle Vernier’s game, concluded by the opener Clara Arbez (6th), and the opportunism of the number 9 Pauline Bourdon-Sansus, the first to flatten the ball after a hand in hand of the opener Zoe Harrison in her in-goal (29th).

Finally in their match, the Bleues were the last to score in the first period, sparing realizing a big job of the package of French forwards (38th).

Led only 31-21 at the break despite a calamitous start, the blue could still believe it.

A superb essay by Aldcroft, at the conclusion of an ambitious English attack offshore (49th), seemed to shower French hopes, before a feat on her wing of the young Kelly Arbey, 19, does not relaunch them (51st).

In a crazy end of the match, and as the English seemed to have taken off with the double of Dow (58th), two late trials of Bourgeois (70th) and Grisez (79th) allowed the French to dream of the feat. A last one on the other hand on the English dismissal cut it short, leaving room only for frustration.