The right pillar, established after a year of absence in the France team, received a red card after twelve minutes on Sunday against Scotland.
Deep down, Mohamed Haouas knew it. Aware of his blood liabilities, the Scots were bound to try to have him unpinned, like three years ago at Murrayfield. They didn’t even need it. The quarter of an hour of play was not even crossed yet that the French right pillar showed a new excess of zeal during the victory of the Blues (32-21), Sunday February 26. While the XV du Chardon camped in front of the blue line, the Montpellier player struck scrum half Ben White with his helmet, hitting him in the head.
For this violent gesture – and all the more useless as his own, in numerical superiority, led by twelve points – he was logically sanctioned with a red card. His second in the Tournament, a “performance” never achieved before. “It’s a fact of the game and a sanction that we do not dispute”acknowledged Fabien Galthié in a post-match press conference.
In the shower, Haouas inevitably pondered, as this stroke of blood brutally brought him back three years, an afternoon in March 2020. We were then at the beginning of the Galthié era, in an archi-full Murrayfield where the festive atmosphere contrasted with the chaotic atmosphere of a Covid-19 already massively diffused. Caught in a scuffle, the pillar, a neophyte on the international scene, had punched a vis-à-vis and was punished with a red card.
“I was not well. I even said to myself: ‘The French team is over.’ I know I fried a cartridge”he declared a few weeks later to The Team. Whatever, Haouas, whose suspension had been buried by the first confinement, had returned to the starting fifteen. For a time only, since Uini Atonio had been preferred to him during the autumn 2021 tour. Since we do not touch a team that stacks successes, the Rochelais had been systematically renewed within an invincible team .
Already out of the race for the World Cup?
Haouas, he had contented himself with crumbs (2 entries into play) during the victorious Tournament last year. So the pillar refocused on his club, establishing himself as an indestructible element of the Brennus won in June 2022. By dint of patience and, it was thought, of maturity, he ate his black bread. Until reintegrating the Blues for this reception of Scotland, taking advantage … of the suspension of Atonio for an uncontrolled tackle against Ireland. “It’s now or never, he plays his place in the group for the World Cup”estimated his ex-trainer Olivier Azam, Sunday morning in L’Equipe.
If, factually, nothing indicates that Haouas is definitely out of the race seven months from the World Cup, he has certainly lost points against Scotland. His suspension should, at a minimum, deprive him of the end of the Tournament – and therefore prevent him from shining with the Blues. Above all, can Fabien Galthié’s staff give full confidence to a player with such a temperament? “Today it is a player who is part of the France team who won with the offensive bonus”, the coach said laconically. Still, the competition in his position, where Atonio remains regular and where Sipili Falatea asserts himself with each entry into play, could cut short the debates.