The Blues, who chained two games in four days after ten days break, had to adapt their training.
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An endurance race, that's what the XV of France is doing since the start of the Rugby World Cup. The Blues face Sunday, October 6, Tonga Kumamoto. Just four days earlier, they dominated the United States (33-9), in the small wooded stadium of Fukuoka.
The team was coming off ten days without a match, since their initial and almost unexpected victory over Argentina (23-21). On the Internet, fans had feigned worry during this period of latency: after ten days, the winger Yoann Huget fun, they asked the Blues if they still expected to participate in the World Cup. The answer was obviously yes, for having seen them in training – twenty minutes, the maximum allowed, at 9 o'clock and already nearly 30 degrees, Saturday, September 28, at Suizenji Athletic Field of Kumamoto.
For this competition which offers the particularity of imposing matches sometimes widely spaced then, suddenly, very close together, the XV of France envisages "A rise in physical regime as and when", "crescendo", as explains Yoann Huget, who participated in Wednesday's victory. With the offensive bonus (five tries scored, the first being from Toulouse), but not the way, against the alleged opponent weakest group C.
Ball in hand
"Come on, guys, last morning! " Implied: last session of such intensity before a good time. This Saturday, the cry came from Thibault Giroud, skull, muscles protruding. A former American footballer. Ex-Olympian also, bobsleigh option, at the 2002 Winter Games. But also former athletics coach. And since June, new fitness coach of the Blues. The one who is responsible for keeping them distance and cadence, like optimizing peaks in shape.
Two more packages
After Wesley Fofana and Demba Bamba, it is hooker Peato Mauvaka and back Thomas Ramos who must give up, injured, following the World Cup in Japan with the France team. To replace them, the coaching will call respectively Christopher Tolofua (Toulon) and Vincent Rattez (La Rochelle), who figured him among the six reservists.
His method: working the physical in the conditions of a match, ball in hand, in an uninterrupted succession of actions. "There, we can correct ourselves under high intensity", explained Jefferson Poirot in July. A preparatory mode that the pillar Bordeaux, author of the fifth test against the United States, says to have "Less known in the past". "Right away, Giroud showed us his standards and the goal of the maneuver, he told us that he would integrate rugby into physical preparation. "
"We sometimes chained sequences of seven minutes without stopping. Three times seven minutes, with two minutes break each time. Sofiane Guitoune
