Nick Cain column: Can Guy Noves make the real France stand up?

Is Guy Noves a greybeard version of D’Artagnan arriving to put the cut and thrust back into French rugby, or an ageing coach who is past his sell-by date? The appointment of the highly decorated former Toulouse coach in June as the new supremo of the French national team has been met with mixed reviews ever since.
There are deep reservations in some quarters of the French rugby community, including the media, that the 62-year-old Noves is too old and no longer merits the job, conveniently ignoring that Graham Henry was 64 when he coached New Zealand to their 2011 World Cup victory.
Despite being the most highly decorated club coach in Europe, winning a record four European Cup finals and nine French championship titles (now Top 14) in 22 years in charge of Toulouse, there are concerns that their decline since 2010 means that Noves has lost the magic touch.
However, what no one can dispute is that Noves had the touch. In their heyday the Toulouse side that he both played for, as a wing from the mid-1970s, and coached for two decades until stepping down last year, epitomised the blend of attacking panache and power that the French consider to be their rugby birthright.
Under Noves’ tutelage Toulouse were renowned for playing champagne rugby, but a highly effective version which not only kept their growing legion of fans happy but also ensured that there was always silverware in the clubhouse.
Given their success, and the large number of Toulouse players capped by France, their style and influence permeated the national side for decades. However, if France once had a reputation for playing with fluidity and artistry – the so-called ‘French flair’ – it is been rendered into unrecognisable stodge over the past 15 years.
The unpalatable truth for the French is that since their unforgettable 43-31 victory over New Zealand at Twickenham in the semi-finals of the 1999 World Cup, they have become what they feared most. Namely, a deadly dull side that inch-by-inch became practitioners of turgid, uninspired ‘method’ rugby.
So much so, that by the end of the 2015 World Cup they had become one of the most unwatchable, robotic sides on the planet. A team without a shred of creativity, and, worse still, one that seemed to lack pride in performance to the extent that their humiliating 62-13 quarter-final defeat by New Zealand was tantamount to capitulation.
England may have been a pale shadow of former glories during the tournament they hosted – suffering the ignominy of going out in the pool stages – but at least their game against Wales was a see-saw ride which generated high sporting drama. Even against Australia, although comprehensively outclassed and outplayed, they did not throw the towel in.
At Toulouse, and in his seven caps for France, Noves played alongside Jean-Pierre Rives, the iconic French flanker, and captain, to whom giving body and soul every time he went on the pitch was second nature. Giving up was not in Rives vocabulary, and he was famous not only for his outstanding attacking link-play but also for his indomitable tackling despite, at 5ft 10ins, often being the smallest forward on the pitch.
Rives, with the distinctive thatch of blond hair that earned him the nickname ‘Casque D’Or’ (Golden Helmet), was the embodiment of French resistance, habitually finishing international matches bloodied but unbowed. He captained France a record 34 times, winning 59 caps, and led them to a Grand Slam in 1981.
Rives, who began a new career as a sculptor after his rugby retirement, is the subject of an intriguing new paperback called Rugby & Art (www.sportsbooks.ltd.uk, £5.99) in which this unique character emerges as a reluctant hero in his conversations with Richard Escot, the senior rugby correspondent for L’Equipe. It’s well worth a read.
Rives, despite being fully engaged in cutting, welding and bending iron into sculpture, also makes the occasional appearance in the rugby media. Here’s what he had to say about the appointment of his old Toulouse comrade, Noves, as head coach, and his hopes for a French revival.
“Stade Toulouse is a true school of rugby. When you play there you are a ‘Stadiste’ for life. It’s a second skin. Guy Noves and his staff are going to succeed (with France). I know that it is going to work. I want him to have fun, and think that they are going to entertain us.”
If Noves brings back some of the flair and fight that the Casque D’Or embodied, and that has gone missing for too long, the French could again bring their brand of rugby artistry to the Six Nations.