France coach praise team's defensive efforts
SPOTLIGHT: France defence coach Shaun Edwards hailed his team’s resilience as they beat Scotland 35-16 on Saturday to be crowned Six Nations champions.
In what was the former Wigan and Britain rugby league legend’s 250th international as a player and coach in both codes, Edwards said the “stars aligned for me tonight”.
“We showed resilience in defence [in] the second half, when we only conceded three points,” Edwards told ITV.
“We defended really well against Ireland but kind of went off it for the last five minutes, but today we were on it for the full 80 [minutes].”
France were only 16-13 up at half-time, but a raft of replacements early in the second-half ended any Scottish hopes of victory at the Stade de France, with Thomas Ramos amassing a personal tally of 20 points to overtake Frederic Michalak as France’s leading all-time points scorer.
France opened their with a 43-0 home rout of Wales before suffering a one-point loss to England (25-26).
The French rebounded with a 73-24 victory over Italy in Rome and an impressive 42-27 win over Ireland in Dublin.
Defence
Edwards said there were no regrets over that loss at Twickenham.
“I feel just as happy as if it was a Grand Slam because it shows we had great resilience to come back from losing a game,” Edwards said.
Aside from Ramos, there was also a new record for France’s electric winger Louis Bielle-Biarrey, who scored a try to take his tally in this championship to eight.
“Since the World Cup in 2023 he has gotten better and better, and hopefully, he gets better again.
“He is a sensational athlete, a wonderful guy,” Edwards said of the Bordeaux-Begles winger.
Bielle-Biarrey played down his record, having moved clear of Jacob Stockdale’s record of seven tries for Ireland in the 2018 edition.
“I’m really happy to have done it as after the England win it [the title] wasn’t a guarantee. We went and grabbed the trophy,” he said.
“It [the record] means nothing much to me. I’m just happy, I would have preferred winning the match over breaking the record.”
Talismanic skipper Antoine Dupont was missing after sustaining a nasty knee injury against Ireland, something not lost on France centre and player-of-the-match Yoram Moefana.
“It’s so bad for Antoine that he was injured, but we wanted to fight in this game for him.
“We did, and we are so happy,” Moefana, who scored a brace of tries, told ITV.
Anthony Jelonch added: “It’s never easy to win a Six Nations. Antoine stayed with us all week, he’s here tonight. It’s good for all of us. We wish him the best recovery.”
Moefana acknowledged it had been a “very tough game, Scotland are a big team and I want to say thank you to the team because we were fighting with Scotland from start to finish. It’s amazing”.
“We are happy on the field and to play our game. We want to take the pressure off and go for tries.”
Scotland coach Gregor Townsend said he had “mixed feelings” after the defeat.
“We asked the players to deliver a performance of effort and physicality and they did that,” Townsend told ITV.
“Our forwards played outstanding rugby at times, really fronted up.”
But he was honest when asked if Scotland deserved to finish higher than fourth in the table.
“No, if we don’t win when we have a lot of the game, that’s where we are going to finish. We are a quality side, it just didn’t go our way this year.”
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