They would probably have preferred to deploy a champagne rugby made of sensational flights. Despite the wide final score (39-6), the Tricolores had to settle for a few blows here and there to dominate the fierce Italians and thus win their first match of the Six Nations Tournament. For the bosses of the Bleues, Annick Hayraud and Thomas Darracq, and the captain of the XV of France Gaëlle Hermet, questioned in a post-match press conference, the essential is safe.
franceinfo: sport: The match was difficult. There were a lot of blunders, but you still win with the five points you came for. Is that what you hold?
Annick Hayraud, coach of Les Bleues: Of course, we retain above all the five points. Despite what we can sometimes read and hear, Italy are a good team, they were able to outsmart us, so it was important to win. It’s true that it was laborious at times, it shows that there is still a lot of work to do, it gives us some leads for the future. The team had not played since November, we can say that it was a recovery match.
How do you explain these clumsiness, this feverishness?
AH: There is not only one explanation, several things have come to accumulate. The fact of playing in front of the public, something that we are not really used to in our championship. Grenoble is also a stadium where we have played great matches in the past. But it’s not worse, it’s a match that puts us on alert.
Gaëlle Hermet, captain of the Blues: It’s something that will do us good for the future, which gives us areas of work. We met recently in training, but in this match there were a lot of emotions, a certain individual pressure too. We wanted to do well, but we didn’t always manage to find each other. Afterwards, we must underline the performance of the Italians, they put us in difficulty. We were already expecting a good level from them, we knew that they would be starved, aggressive, that they were going to alternate a game deployed and upwind.
In the end you didn’t take a try, despite good Italian sequences in the first period. Can we say that it is the defense, above all, that makes you win this match?
Thomas Darracq, sports manager: Absolutely, it’s a game that we win in defense. Moreover, it was the image of the state of mind of this team. As you could feel, the girls felt in trouble. There were small hand mistakes that can destabilize the group, but they never let go. We had several difficult chances to defend near the lines, but we managed to hold on until the end.