News

France had 'ants in their pants'

November 24 2008

France flank and part-time captain Thierry Dusautoir was in no mood to hide his disappointment after Les Bleus narrowly lost to Australia on Saturday and said his team need to work on their decision-making.

The XV de France have every reason to feel frustrated after fly-half David Skrela missed five penalties and a drop goal in the 13-18 defeat at the Stade de France. But Dusautoir feels that the French lost the match due to their poor match management.

"We're frustrated to have lost the match, for sure, and we're especially frustrated because we had the impression that we were at least as good as them," he told Rugbyrama

"We should have won the match ten times and at the end we lost. A bit through our own fault. We can use this match as a measure of how much work is still to be done.

"David (Skrela) didn't have a good night from the kicking tee. Two more successful attempts would have been enough. At this level you can't afford to not convert your opportunities.

"In addition, if we had scored earlier it would have obliged the Australians to play a bit more. But even without that, we had more than enough opportunities. The two tries that we let slip, we should not have.

"We can't be satisfied with this kind of performance. We played a decent game, but not a perfect game. We're aiming for better. We don't want to narrowly loose to big teams, we want to beat them. We're still missing a little something."

Coach Marc Lièvremont felt his team lacked patience, but Dusautoir feels France could have managed their match better.

"We let ourselves go to sleep at the start of the second half. We finish on a high at the break with that penalty try and we forgot to put them under pressure after half-time," he said.

"We let them dictate the rhythm of the match. That's were we need to progress. After all we played a lot more than them and had the match in our grasps."

Much was expected of the Wallaby pack that beat England a week earlier but the French heavies dominated the forwards battle.

"We're not surprised. We had worked a lot and knew that we were ready even if everyone was saying they would push us around," said the 27-year-old.

Dusautoir felt that Australia produced a typically professional effort.

"The Australians didn't do much, they simply capitalised on our mistakes. On our side, we sometimes tried to do too much. We had ants in our pants and lacked control. They didn't make that mistake," he explained

The flank admitted that the defeat would be the outstanding feature of their November Tests series.

"We're not far off the mark. But we knew that the match against Australia would be decisive," he said.

"The team is still under construction, but we could have done better on the whole. We'll have to work hard before the Six Nations."

Once again Dusautoir, who is becoming a stalwart of the French pack, finished the game as captain, a role he says he is comfortable with.

"After three times in a row, I'm starting to get used to it," he joked.

"It's a real pleasure, I'm proud that the coaches have confidence in me. But I didn't wait for Lionel (Nallet) to go off to have an input on the field. When it's needed, it comes naturally to me."