Can it be just four years ago that L’Equipe, the authoritative voice of sport in France, gushed “Si Blond, Si Bon!” in its pages about Richie Gray?
The crowd at the Stade de France that day in 2011, whichever colours they were wearing, rose to their feet in acclaim as the 6ft 10 inch Scot in his first season in the national team galloped around tacklers at full pace.
Does he remember it? “I’ve fond memories of that game, but I don’t remember the crowd at that moment,” he admitted. “I think I was mainly trying not to get caught from behind.”
The moment the French fell in love with Richie, it seemed inevitable he’d end up playing for one of the major clubs there, and after a year at Sale that’s what has happened with Castres, albeit that that club currently prop up the Top 14.
“It’s been a nice change, a fresh environment here with Scotland and it’s an environment that’s been going well,” he said.
“Obviously domestically it’s been a tough season and you just have to do what you can, you work hard for your team and you slog it out. We are by no means finished, we still have some pretty important league games. But now you’ve got to look ahead because you are playing for your country.
“There’s a few bets been placed in the Castres’ changing rooms. I am maybe a little more familiar than the others guys will be with the environment and a couple of the players so in that way you look forward to it a bit more.”
Three players from Castres got into the French squad but only one, South African born scrum-half Rory Kockott, will start on Saturday.
“He’s an interesting character, I can tell you that much,” said Gray. “He’s an out and out athlete, very powerful, very fit, very fast and it should be pretty interesting going up against him because he can get pretty chippy as well!”
France are confident about the Six Nations but that confidence can be shaken, Richie believes.
““We are expecting a passionate crowd at the opening of the Six Nations, they are going to come flying out the blocks in the first 20 minutes and we will need to weather the storm, but if we can put pressure on them you’ll see the crowd silenced a bit.
“When then crowd gets behind them and they do something well and they grow and they grow and they get better and better. But you can stop them, stop what they want to do and silence the crowd it works against them even more and they maybe start forcing things and things go to ground.”
French rugby has changed him, he believes.
“I think my physicality has improved as a player just because week in and week out you are going up against some pretty big men and if you don’t front up you are going to get run over,” he added.
“We can’t wait, everyone’s buzzing in camp to get started. But we know what a challenge it is.
“We did go well in the autumn, particularly in the lineout and both Vern and Jonathan Humphreys deserve credit for that. We are not trying to reinvent the wheel or come up with anything magical, we just want to do what we do and do it well.
“But we go into a Six Nations where teams will do a lot of analysis, teams will be sharper so we need to be sharper as well.”