ETERNAL 3RD

Having won bronze on a remarkable seven occasions, FRANCE now plan to reach their first-ever World Cup final...

- RAPHAEL JUCOBIN

THE DÉFAITE encourageante, an encouraging or even a promising defeat, is a familiar aphorism in French sport, for players, fans and journalists alike. It's an oft-derided refrain, used (increasingly ironically) to put a hopeful spin on frustrating results and near misses from which positives can nevertheless be drawn.

To its detractors, a defeat is a defeat - no matter the circumstances or scoreline. Both interpretations hold true for les Bleues, who have fallen to defeat by the smallest of margins twice in the last three years: their World Cup semifinal against hosts New Zealand three years ago (25-24), and the Six Nations finale at Twickenham at the end of April (43-42). While results had been patchy since 2022, the latter match provided a jolt of hope as they entered the final straight of their World Cup preparations.

Heavy defeats to Canada and New Zealand either side of victory over the USA had made for a dispiriting autumn for les Bleues last year. “We wanted to keep our momentum going but in the end it was a big blow for us,” France co-captain Manaé Feleu told RW ahead of this year’s Six Nations.

“It’s not where we would have wanted to be at that stage of the World Cup cycle, but it’s for the best that it happened at that point. It allowed us to set the record straight and challenge ourselves, in terms of what needed to change and what we needed to work on before the World Cup.”

The result of that collective introspection would be a Six Nations campaign which fell two points short of a first Grand Slam → since 2018 for the XV de France. A Twickenham finale for the title would see the team push England all the way. A second-half comeback, capped off by Joanna Grisez’s spectacular late solo effort - later named Try of the Tournament - wasn’t enough to complete the upset. There was, however, an overriding feeling that in standing their ground against the world’s No 1 side, France had pulled off an unlikely feat.