Six Nations 2011: Marc Liemont’s decision to play Sebastien Chabal at No 8 was a shambolic decision
Two out of three ain’t bad but the biggest of Marc Lièvremont’s three gambles on Saturday – starting Sébastien Chabal at No 8 – was ill-starred and ended with the ignominious sight of Chabal being unceremoniously dragged off after 50 minutes and replaced by Julien Bonnaire.
Warhorses: old campaigners Yannick Juzion and Sebastien Chabal confer at Twickenham Photo: PA
By Brendan Gallagher 7:57PM GMT 26 Feb 2011
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While the other two players he introduced - Dimitri Yachvili and yannick jauzion - gave decent accounts of themselves Chabal looked out of sorts from the off.
At his best the Racing Metro man is the ultimate impact player but the trouble with impact players is that when they don’t meet expectations they have precious little else to offer and become a luxury.
Chabal can bring a massive physicality to proceedings and that is what Lièvremont was gambling on, but yesterday he had one of those iffy afternoons.
France wanted intensity, big hits, go-forward and muscle. Except that with the French, and with Chabal in particular, physicality is not something that can usually be measured in kilograms and biceps. It’s all to do with how badly they really want it.
On Saturday the 'caveman’ spent most of the first half wandering around in a daze like a man blinking in the sunlight for the first time in years.
Lièvremont fretted and frowned on the sidelines, aware that to bring him off too early would be humiliating and underline his own mistake, but eventually he lost patience and threw on Bonnaire, who thus reuntied with Thierry Dusautoir and Imanol Harinordoquy, the trio that served France so well in the opening two games.
Lièvremont can’t say he wasn’t warned. That doughty old French warrior Serge Betsen has been warning all week that he didn’t fancy Chabal at No 8 for one second.
Firstly because he doesn’t think Chabal has enough footballing nous to control matters from such a pivotal position and secondly because he felt the existing backrow had been an area of strength for France.
By playing Chabal at No 8, with a new scrum-half in Yachvili, Lièvremont also denied France the considerable services of Harinordoquy in his best position. Harinordoquy had a fine game, but France could have done with him running the show throughout.
Lièvremont’s other two punts just about came off, particularly Yachvili in the first half. Yachvili, is a past master of subterfuge and guerilla war tactics and a man who won three Tests against England virtually single-handed between 2004-6. So much so that he was christened L’homme qui bat les Anglais – the man who beats the English – by L’Equipe.
Yachvili’s goal kicking is a joy to watch when he is on song, as he was for the first half on Saturday when he landed three.
For Yachvili’s third successful kick, a fiendishly difficult 47 metre effort from wide on the left, there was the very considerable distraction of Andrew Sheridan, who had gone in the calf, receiving treatment on the ground right in Yachvili’s eyesight.
Mere mortals would either have stopped and waited for the unfortunate Sheridan to be carted off or at least request that referee George Clancy move him to one side.
But not Yachvili, in fact it is doubtful if the Biarritz man even saw the massive 19-stone England prop. He saw only the ball and the distant posts. Nothing else existed.
He lost his edge a bit after the break as did France generally and there were no complaints from a philosopical Lièvremont afterwards: “I said before the game that I think the England side is better than us at the moment.
"They are the best team in the north hemisphere, and now they have won today the path to the Grand Slam is wide open.
“I am really disappointed for the players. We knew at half-time it was going to be a very tough and close game, but we made a bad start to the second half, and that was the key.
"The first half was very balanced, but we remained very fragile. It was very difficult to come back and score again.
"We had to score twice, and England were fitter than us. They are a very good team, but they only won 17-9, and still have a step to go to improve their rugby.”
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