Laporte rotates for Croke Park cracker
7 Feb 2007
France coach Bernard Laporte has named five changes for the Ireland clash on Sunday.
Two changes are due to injury, with centre Florian Fritz and winger Cedric Heymans crying off with ailments from the 39-3 victory over Italy. Perpignan’s David Marty and Toulouse’s Vincent Clerc come into the starting side as a result.
The trio of Sylvain Marconnet, Pascal Pape and Imanol Harinordoquy are elevated from the bench in a bid to give as many players game time as possible.
“We decided to rotate the players to maintain a competition among our squad,” Laporte said. “The players who are going to start the match on Sunday will be very eager to show they are as good as the ones who won in Rome last Saturday. They know they are in competition with each other.”
This Six Nations clash will be the first international played at Croke Park with Lansdowne Road being rebuilt. Ireland have shown themselves to be a resurgent force in recent times, and many have billed this encounter against the title-holders as the match of the tournament.
“It will be a hellish game. The games against Ireland are always tough but this one will be played in a very special environment, in a stadium which is a temple of Gaelic sports where rugby players didn’t have the right to play,” Laporte said.
“Ireland are a quality team, a very complete team. They play good rugby and they will certainly will be eager to beat us because the last four times we played, they lost, and because we’ll face each other in the World Cup pool phase,” he said.
But Laporte was mindful how things could change before September.
“As I said before we faced Argentina last November, every game is played in a different context. Sunday’s winners will not necessarily win in September,” he said.
“Even if Ireland lose their fifth game in a row against us on Sunday, it doesn’t mean they will lose the sixth.”
France – 15 Clement Poitrenaud, 14 Vincent Clerc, 13 David Marty, 12 Yannick Jauzion, 11 Christophe Dominici, 10 David Skrela, 9 Pierre Mignoni; 8 Sebastien Chabal, 7 Imanol Harinordoquy, 6 Serge Betsen, 5 Pascal Pape, 4 Lionel Nallet, 3 Pieter de Villiers, 2 Raphael Ibanez (c), 1 Sylvain Marconnet. Subs: 16 Sebastien Bruno, 17 Olivier Milloud, 18 Jerome Thion, 19 Julien Bonnaire, 20 Dimitri Yachvili, 21 Lionel Beauxis, 22 Cedric Heymans.
5 Comments
7 Feb 2007, 10:02 am
First?
7 Feb 2007, 10:02 am
Wowwwww!
7 Feb 2007, 10:04 am
Go Paddies!
7 Feb 2007, 11:28 am
This is gonna be a cracker of a game. Thank God rugby’s back!
7 Feb 2007, 12:53 pm
First as in:
Croke Park is owned by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA – affectionately known as the “grab all round association” by those of us who follow or play “English” games).
The GAA has a ban on “foreign” (i.e. English) games being played on any of its grounds, even ones like Croke Park, which was largely paid for out of taxpayers money. This ban somehow doesn’t apply to American Football, Boxing or U2 concerts, but there you go. Time was, any GAA player who was caught playing “foreign” games would be kicked out of the organisation.
After no small amount of public, political and in-house pressure, the GAA recently decided to allow rugby and football to be played at Croke Park while Lansdowne Rd is being re-built. Some people, notably the members from N. Ireland, still have serious misgivings about this, so there’s quite a bit of tension around the place.
In any case, never mind France (although it’s still a historic occasion), it’s ENGLAND playing us there that’ll be the real event, thanks to the history books…
So if you see grown men crying, don’t assume it’s the Guinness – they’re either delighted or disgusted at where the match is being held!
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