France’s Jalimack 2.0 experiment: ‘We speak the same rugby’
With no group training to tune up a new 10-15 combo, the Ntamack / Jalibert duo – reunited for Les Bleus for the first time since two tests at 10-12 in November 2021 – worked together in a single set-up session
The media often pit them against each other. We see them as a pair, and a combination of very good players never hurts a team – Fabien Galthie
Romain Ntamack and Matthieu Jalibert tested their fly-half / full-back fulcrum for a grand total of six minutes before its first official outing in France’s second Nations Championship outing against Australia at the weekend, according to reports in France.
A calf injury picked up in the two-point defeat to the All Blacks in Christchurch meant Jalibert sat out group training all week. Although head coach Fabien Galthie named him at 15, whether he would actually make the Brisbane pitch remained the number one question for France until a fitness test the day before the game.
With no group training to tune up a new 10-15 combo, the Ntabert / Jalimack duo – reunited for Les Bleus for the first time since a two-test run-out at 10-12 in November 2021 – worked together in a set-up session for a 10th of an hour at Suncorp Stadium a day before testing the experiment against Australia, regional newspaper Sud Ouest said.
Here’s Squidge Rugby’s analysis of the partnership in action.
“It was quite short,” Ntamack, rather drily, recalled of the work-on period after the match. “But with players like [Jalibert], it’s quite easy … we pretty much speak the same rugby. And in [the French] system, the fly-half and full-back cover each other, so it’s easy to find our bearings.”
France scored six tries to beat Australia 42-26, scoring 30 unanswered points in the second half after going in at the break 21-12 down. All of them involved contributions from Ntamack and / or Jalibert. Individually and in full-orchestra concert.
As Galthie said: “The media often pit them against each other. We see them as a pair – and a combination of very good players never hurts a team.”
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As experiments go, it wasn’t bad for six minutes’ prep, and one worth repeating – by early accounts they’ll get a second run against Japan on Saturday, if Jalibert is fit.
Was it perfect? No. Rugby isn’t a game of perfect. Could it get better. Definitely. Attack coach Patrick Arlettaz said much the same this week: “I thought they were pretty good, but there’s room for improvement. It opens up some interesting possibilities for us; there’s a good connection between the two.
“They’re two intelligent lads who speak the same rugby language. They enjoy playing together, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t work out well.
“They didn’t train together last week, so the match was their first training session together. For a first training session together, it wasn’t bad at all…”
But suggestions that it casts doubt over Thomas Ramos’s future at 15 are as mad as cheese. It’s another strong option. That’s always good to have.
Arlettaz was pretty succinct about it. “Making ... choices is part of our job. It’s not something to worry about. You worry when there’s no choice left – not when everyone’s available.”
It wasn’t the only experiment that France ran on Saturday in Brisbane. Or on the opening two weekends of the inaugural Nations Championship.
Galthie has repeatedly insisted that the July 42 is “not the French team”.
“Looking back at the previous match [against New Zealand] we had a team with only four players who had played in the Six Nations,” he said as he confirmed the squad for the match against Australia. “Collective experience was rather limited.
“The team [in Brisbane] still isn’t the French national team – this isn’t the team that started the [Six Nations] Tournament. This is not a French national team – unlike Ireland, for example – that played the entire Tournament.
“Out of 23 players, that’s a third of the team. So the stakes remain the same for us. This is a development squad.”
It would be easy to claim the coach is being disingenuous with his description of the France squad in New Zealand, Australia and Japan as a “development” one. Jalibert, Ntamack and Lucu, for example, are not development players.
But he’s not entirely wrong. While Jalibert and Ntamack, individually, are well beyond the development stage, their 10-15 partnership is a mere 86 minutes old. Firmly in development territory.
And Galthie and his staff are looking to see how new squad members Aaron Grandidier-Nkanang, Moses Alo-Emile, and Tom Staniforth fit into their Australia 2027 planning. On the whole, it seems, things are going quite well.
Galthie has a new centre partnership in the bag, with generational talent Fabien Brau-Boirie slotting in alongside Yoram Moefana as if they were two bodies with a single brain. Their workrate and effectiveness on both sides of the ball can’t help but impress the coaches. A new midfield duo is born, with Nicolas Depoortere, Emilien Gailleton, Pierre-Louis Barassi as back-up.
Lenni Nouchi – a future France captain if ever there was one – and Marko Gazotti have both definitively added their names, alongside fellow 2023 under-20 World Champion Oscar Jegou, to Galthie’s already pretty long backrow list. As has Killian Tixeront, who has done plenty right off the bench in Australia and New Zealand.
And Grandidier-Nkanang’s name will now be very much in future wing option discussions. Like Pau team-mates Theo Attissogbe and Gregoire Arfeuil, he’s a serious aerial operator, an area France have found themselves occasionally lacking.
Meanwhile, there’s the small matter of experience-building. Peato Mauvaka – the most experienced player in the squad let alone the Brisbane 23 – won his 47th Test cap. Ntamack (44), and Moefana and Jalibert (both winning their 41st) were the only other players with more than 40 tests under their belts.
France put away an Australia side that had 31 more caps in their starting pack than they did in their run-on XV, while the ageless James Slipper had nearly twice as many caps as Les Bleus’ bench combined.
New Zealand’s pack against France, a week earlier, boasted 18 more caps than Australia’s, while the All Blacks boasted more international experience in Codie Taylor, Ardie Savea, Jordie Barrett and Damien Mackenzie than Les entire Bleus side they beat by two points.
Galthie counts his tenure as France head coach in matches rather than weeks, months and years. He has Saturday’s Japan test, four Nations Championship internationals in November, five Six Nations matches and an as-yet unspecified number of warm-up games ahead of Men’s Rugby World Cup 2027.
He’ll have perhaps 80 to 85 percent of his squad for Australia already heavily pencilled in. Coming up over the next few months, filling in the gaps. And hope against hope of avoiding injuries.
