France’s new licence to play open rugby makes for a different proposition for Scotland than any of the last three games they’ve played, believes Tommy Seymour.
Scotland beat France 29-18 a year ago at Murrayfield and have lost narrowly in Paris 19-16 and 15-8 on their last two visits in 1995, two games the Scots feel that they might have won with a little better execution and rub of the green.
But Seymour detects that veteran head coach Guy Noves is slowly getting his squad away from the point-to-point, limited style and very un-French style they had under Philippe St Andre and back to their traditional values.
“It is a different French team and they’ve obviously been given real license to play from anywhere and to try things,” said the wing. “That’s why everyone is talking about the resurgence in French rugby and I think they are getting back that flair that everyone likes to see from them.
“We’re trying to focus on what we got right in previous meetings, because we don’t want to go completely away from what we’ve been able to do in previous occasions; we didn’t concede a try against them in the last Six Nations game in Paris, and no tries would be ideal this time.
“But in those previous games, they probably were still fighting against the way management wanted them to play, but now that they’ve been given this license and they’re confident in what they do, we need to be really disciplined.
“There’s no reason whatsoever we can’t go over to Paris and get a win.”
The flipside to France opening out, of course, is that they are more likely to leave gaps.
“They do like to go with an offloading game and break up the game and make it unstructured,” continued Seymour. “We’ll hope to exploit that by being structured and biding our time so we can put those offloads under pressure and create havoc.
“We back ourselves because we also like to play an unstructured game and have backs that thrive on broken field play. What we don’t want is to get in to an arm wrestle with them and keep it tight, so we’ll certainly be trying to exploit the weaknesses in playing an unstructured game.
“But we’ve also got to be careful when doing it, because if you get it wrong or they sniff an opportunity where you’re a little disconnected, they’re one of the best at taking advantage.”
The legacy from the Ireland game and Glasgow and Edinburgh’s successes against leading French sides is negligible, adds Seymour.
“Getting a win first up creates a little bit of momentum, especially as it was against Ireland who have had amazing results this season,” he continued.
“A win against them is hugely important because we now know we can compete with the very best, which is something we believed anyway but needed to prove.
“But the wins against Racing for Glasgow are great for individual confidence but here it’s all about Scotland. We’ve concentrated more on the autumn that the big wins at club level.”
France’s back three of Fijian-born wings Vakatawa and Nakaitaci and full-back Scott Spedding will be a handful for Seymour and his colleagues, but at least they have an idea what’s coming.
“You’ve got to be very wary, they are very good with the ball,” he added. “Having played with Leone Nakarawa and Niko Matavalu at Glasgow these guys have similar abilities in terms of being able to get the ball out the back of the hand or suck guys in and manage to get the offload away.
“As a winger marking one of those guys it’s important to stay connected, to be wary. They are very talented players so we have to connect as a backline.
“We certainly don’t want to kick down the throats of the Fijian boys or Spedding who played incredibly well against England last weekend. We’ve got to be very smart about how we operate around them, so we’ll be looking to identify areas where we can avoid them getting the ball on their terms.”
And the team are certain that they can improve on the Ireland game, he stressed.
“It’s something we’ve highlighted, it’s very easy to become wrapped up with one win, one victory,” he went on. “Of course you want to enjoy it, but we came back in on Monday and it was a new game week.
“You’re not always going to have the first-half that we had, getting points early on. We’ve got to focus on not having those drop-offs, not having 20 minutes when we don’t particularly see the game out.
“If we can do that then hopefully were not going to rely on Greig (Laidlaw) and his magic boot to get us the win.”