LONG READ When will France learn to win away from home?

‘Neighbours’ and ‘Home and Away’ are two of the most popular and enduring soap operas of recent times. Both have stood the test of telly time, with the first recently celebrating its 40^th anniversary, and the second lagging only three years behind. There has been room for expansion for the two series, at home in Australia and in the overseas market: Neighbours has been exported to no fewer than 60 countries, Home and Away to mind-boggling 80.

In the neighbourhood of lasting rugby success, you need to play home and away equally well. It is not unusual for teams to make ‘home’ an impregnable fortress, but extending the range of those powers by winning away, in alien or hostile conditions, is the ultimate litmus test. This is the trial-by-fire Les Bleus will undergo over the next three rounds of the Six Nations.

France play three successive matches away from their home at Stade de France against first England at Twickenham, then Italy at Stadio Olimpico in Rome, and finally Ireland at Aviva Stadium in Dublin on 8 March. Those matches will decide the fate of France’s championship, and it will give a heavy hint as to French prospects at the 2027 World Cup in you guessed it, Australia.

After failing to win their home World Cup at the end of 2023, the most daunting of climbs may just be getting steeper and more foreboding. France have yet to register a tour series victory against one of the southern hemisphere ‘big three’ of New Zealand, South Africa or Australia over the past 30 years, and have only chalked up one away win in nine attempts in the most recent series against them. France’s only touring success has come against second-tier opponents – USA and Canada in 2004, and Japan in 2022.

Is there a French psychological block away from home? If so, it has been inadvertently reinforced by the decision to rest 20 top players, or more, from Les Bleus’ momentous July 2025 tour of New Zealand. The original idea of resting the players participating in the Top 14 final on 28 June, seven days before the first Test in Dunedin, was developed further by head coach Fabien Galthié in an interview with L’Equipe:

“Players will benefit from four mandatory weeks off and four weeks without matches.

“We built on trust while adjusting the management of the international season by choosing to rest our ‘premium’ during the summer tours.

“It was a first step. We want to go even further which will mean that we will go on tour in the summer of 2025 in New Zealand without our ‘premium’ players.

“Why change strategy? Because we’re travelling to the All Blacks? You have to be consistent.”

The 2025 tour should by rights be a memorable, ‘apex’ contest between two predators at the peak of their powers. The implication the premium group to be stood down may include more than just the Top 14 finalists would dilute the attraction down to a very hazy image of the real thing.

The FFR claim the strategy of removing top players from July tours is “part of a preparation cycle for the 2027 World Cup, with an approach focused on managing the most in-demand players and on the gradual construction of the squad”. It makes sense from the point of view of a domestic season which runs, on and off, for over 10 and half months. But at national level, when do you start practising winning against the most formidable opponents, in the most hostile conditions within that cycle? If not now, when? There will be no friendly neighbours on the southern side of the equator when the men in blue arrive on Australian shores in 2027.

The psychology of ‘home and away’ performance, and what makes a rugby nation a truly good neighbour also percolates down to club/provincial level. Four years ago, I came across the following set of statistics for home wins in various leagues around the world.

Wind the clock on, and stats for the current season [with 2024 Super Rugby Pacific included] of the same leagues read as follows.

Although there has been gradual rise in the percentage of home wins in all three of the Premiership, URC and Super Rugby, the split remains stable at around one away win for every two home victories. The real outlier is the Top 14, where away teams can expect to win only one in every four contests [or more]. That 10% represents a huge difference between France and everyone else.

It is partly a function of the gruelling 26-match regular season which eclipses the demands of the Premiership and URC [both 18 games] and is almost double the number of games in Super Rugby Pacific [14]. With more extensive and stringent squad requirements and the threat of relegation hanging in the air like the sword of Damocles, clubs learn to sacrifice the more testing away matches and focus on ‘must-win’ home games.

The Top 14 is a monster eating everything in its path, and at national level it is keeping France firmly at home, stuck on its front doorstep literally and psychologically. French ambitions may reach as far as the Champions Cup and the Six Nations, but it is hard indeed to see how they will ever include the southern hemisphere, away from home and out of their comfort zone. The World Cup? You can forget it.

The most unfortunate irony is there is a ‘golden generation’ of French players who are well capable of rising to the occasion if given the chance, and the 43-0 drubbing of Wales only underlined the point.

There were 10 players in the starting XV from the best two clubs in the Top 14, Stade Toulousain and Union Bordeaux-Bègles, and there will probably be 12 when Damian Penaud and a fully-charged Cyrille Baille return by the middle of the tournament. Take those out of a side to play the All Blacks and you rip the heart out of the contest.

Toulouse, with developing support from UBB, set the tone for most of what France can offer of value in the transition from club to international footy, and inevitably it was their little wizard at nine who orchestrated events at Stade de France. By the time he trotted off in the 49^th minute France were already 28-0 up and four tries to the good.

Les Rouges et Noirs are always on the lookout for an increase in tempo, and hence attacking opportunity from tapped penalties.

Antoine Dupont is probably the only player on planet rugby who can consistently run sideways, and even a little bit backwards, to create chances for others around him, and it is probably a silver thread he has picked up from his Olympics sevens experience.

All the eyes of the Welsh players, from first defender all the way out to Josh Adams on the extreme left edge, are so transfixed by the threat of Dupont it has to create space for the men around him. As the Wales defence is pulled up and in, so the space on the right beyond Adams becomes ever wider, and a more and more inviting target zone.

The magician can not only run backwards and kick effectively off his right foot, he can do it off the left equally well.

Add wingmen as lethal as Louis Bielle-Biarrey and Penaud to the hypnotic power of their Svengali at scrum-half, and you have a Toulousain/UBB attacking axis France cannot hope to replicate on a tour of New Zealand without them.

The spell is originally cast by the ever-present threat of a bust around the fringes of the ruck.

Dupont is as influential on defence as he is on attack, and he plays consistently as the highest defender upfield in Shaun Edwards’ aggressive scheme.

It is a unique set of attributes even the talent-laden depth chart of French nines cannot match, at least not in any one individual. If the two outstanding clubs in the Top 14 reach the final of competition as they did in 2024, it is highly unlikely any UBB or Toulousain players will feature on the July tour.

The team which remains will be competent and hardy, but they will not trouble the All Blacks unduly, and a series which could have been Michelin-starred will turn to meat and potatoes. The twin points of difference which allow France to bridge the span between club and international rugby will be absent.

However successful it may be as a domestic product, the Top 14 is not making any friends overseas, and its demands are so relentless they are hindering rather than encouraging the French national side to become the best version of itself. Sing it, sing the jingle with me:

“Neighbours/need to get to know each other

Next door is only a footstep away.

Neighbours should be there for one another,

That’s when good neighbours/become good friends.”