There is a rugby romance about France, but the reality is not quite as seductive.
For a team that has never won the World Cup and has won just once in nine Tests against the Springboks in the last 15 years, they get the most magnificent reviews.
The Springboks have won their last three matches against France at the Stade de France, two by a single point, in 2017 and the famed 29-28 World Cup quarter-final.
France has beaten the Boks 12 times in 45 Tests.
There are just six survivors in the starting XV of the French team that lost the 2023 World Cup quarter-final to the Boks.
The core of those World Cup-winning Boks are in Paris.
Yes, the emotion will be there and the French coach Fabien Galthié has spoken of that World Cup defeat as a scar that will never heal for his players, coaching staff or the French rugby nation.
The French 23 that plays on Saturday has not played together before. The Boks are very settled.
France won the Six Nations, but that was back in February this year.
Those Six Nations winners did not go to New Zealand for a three-Test series. Galthié took a mixture of oldies and newbies to lose three Tests on three successive Saturdays.
France gets the star billing, but the real stars at the Stade de France are the Boks, who won the World Cup final there in 2007 and 2023.
France, pre the 2023 World Cup, and last year, beat the All Blacks three times in Paris, the last by a point. The Boks have beaten the All Blacks in five of their last six Tests.
The All Blacks were for so long the benchmark but the current lot are not that at all.
France hammered Ireland in Dublin to secure the Six Nations, and that is where all the love comes from.
France is a team I enjoy, but their reputation of being the sport’s running rugby romantics is the most misrepresented.
Under Galthié, they kick more than any among the World’s Top eight Test teams. They kick long and back a press defence and attack from transitions.
They have talented and wonderful individuals and when Antoine Dupont plays, his influence is so big it changes the on-field dynamic and inspires a collective belief that does not exist in his absence.
We forget the endless times the Boks hammer the French, so when the French do win, the world’s rugby media dines out on the occasional victory for a decade.
There is hype to Saturday night based on the drama of what happened in that World Cup quarter-final. It is similar to the Irish showdown with the All Blacks last weekend in Chicago.
Ireland won for the first time against the All Blacks in 111 years at Soldier Field in 2016, but last Saturday got clobbered in the final quarter to lose for the third successive time since the memorable 28-24 New Zealand win at the Stade de France in the 2023 World Cup quarter-final. A year later the All Blacks beat Ireland at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin to end a home run of 19 Test wins and add the third win in Chicago.
France v the Boks has the same type of narrative.
We forget the endless times the Boks hammer the French, so when the French do win, the world’s rugby media dines out on the occasional victory for a decade.
The Boks have won eight of the last nine against them and have earned the right to believe, if they play well on Saturday night, they will make it nine from 10.
France gets a freebie in global respect based on this romantic notion that they play champagne rugby. They don’t.
The most balanced and effective team in world rugby and the one closest to champagne rugby, are the Springboks. It is why they have won 80 percent of their Tests in the past 36 months, won back to back World Cups in 2019 and 2023 and are the No 1 team in the world.
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