Marc Li�vremont seems to have lost the respect of his players and now must hand control over to them
There are times when a coach has to ask himself whether he's doing more harm than good. Whether it's better to take a step back for the good of the team.
Things get scrambled at press conferences and the language issue obviously doesn't help when the coach speaks in French and the majority of the media at this World Cup speaks English, but if only half the things coming out of the France camp are true, then it might be time for Marc Li�vremont to swallow his pride, move to the sidelines for the next five days and let his players look after themselves.
If that sounds like a crazy idea, then I can assure you that such extreme methods not only work on occasions, but that they are sometimes the only way to turn a team around. And France need turning if they are to put up any kind of performance against England on Saturday.
Even before last weekend's matches it looked as though France were faced with an uphill task against a side who were getting stronger and stronger and who had history ? 2003 in Sydney and 2007 in Paris ? on their side when it comes to knock-out rugby. England know how to win, as they showed against Scotland.
Under the cosh in Auckland, they again found the right cards to play. Struggling in the scrums and lineout, Tom Palmer came on and the set-piece suddenly provided a solid platform. The England forwards took control of the match, wresting it from Scotland.
Then, with Ben Youngs misfiring, up steps Richard Wigglesworth for his best game in an England shirt. Playing flatter than Youngs and Jonny Wilkinson, Wigglesworth and Toby Flood starting asking different questions of the Scotland defence.
Having the right kind of players around clearly helps, but you have to have character to win games from behind. Whether England would have won had Scotland not had to push for a bonus point, who can say. But the heart was there and when you have a finisher like Chris Ashton on the field, you should never be out of the game.
Compare that to France versus Tonga and heart isn't the first word that comes to mind. Had it not been for some fantastic last-ditch defending by Maxime M�dard and Tonga's strange decision in apparently not going for four tries but settling for the victory ? albeit a remarkable one ? then the embarrassment could have been even worse.
France were run ragged by a side who were still smarting from being beaten by Canada. As Li�vremont, pictured, said: "Never has qualification tasted as bitter as this." England went through undefeated at the top of their pool, while France became only the second team, after Fiji in the first World Cup back in 1987, to qualify after two defeats.
Looking at those beatings, by New Zealand and Tonga, I wouldn't expect France to have a big enough performance left to see them past England and into the semi-finals and that would be the end of Li�vremont's time in charge. In fairness to the man, in four years he has never been afraid to take difficult decisions, although some would argue that quite a lot of them created more problems than they solved.
Now, though, it's probably time for him to take the biggest of the lot and stand aside in the hope of unifying his squad. I can see of no other way because the chemistry within the group is clearly very wrong, even if you just take what is being said by management and players at face value.
There is no guarantee that it will work, but I've been in situations as a player when it has. And I've heard from others who have helped make it work at the very highest level.
As a player, I knew a club where the coach wasn't allowed, by his chairman, to coach for the last two months of the season and we went on to do the Double. But if Li�vremont wants an example much closer to home, he only has to look at the team he is playing on Saturday and the way England's players, with their then coach's blessing, found a means of getting to the 2007 final.
It's one of those remarkable stories ? beaten 36-0 by South Africa in the pool stages, England players took control, much as Brian Ashton would have wanted. And they somehow got to the final, where they went down to the Springboks again, but only by nine points and after a fairly hotly contested "try" when the game was still in the balance.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2011/oct/03/france-marc-lievremont-world-cup-england
No comments:
Post a Comment