Jacques Brunel has brought France together, but can he bring success?

Back in 2009, Jacques Brunel made a bet with his players at Perpignan. If they won the championship that season, Brunel would give a piggyback to their prop, Sebastian Bozzi. Brunel is a slight man, Bozzi is not. The latter came in at 19 stone. Brunel was 55 years old. Well, Perpignan beat Clermont in the final, 22-13, and won the Brennus Shield for the first time in 50 years. And after the match Brunel hoisted Bozzi up on his shoulders and set off around the field. “That’s Jacques,” says Perry Freshwater, who played in that game, “always as good as his word”. A week later, Brunel had a heart attack.

Brunel is 64 now, and has just taken on another heavy load. He took over from Guy Novès as the France coach at the start of January. Under Novès, France had lost five of their last six games and drawn the other, against Japan in Paris. “I have the impression that the difficulties are related to a state of mind,” Brunel said, “a gloom, a loss of confidence, I want to change this climate, to air it out, I want to see life and smiles.” But behind the results, France have bigger problems. The national set-up is a mess, beset by structural issues that cannot be fixed with a smile or a piggyback.

Joe Worsley was working with Brunel at Bordeaux before he took on the national job. “There’s so many handicaps,” Worsley says, “the lack of time with the national team, the length of the domestic season, the technical ability of the players. There are so many areas in which they’re so far behind everyone else.” Brunel’s grand plan was that he would be in charge of selecting the team, but the coaching would be done by five or six of the best men in the Top 14, who would work with France part-time. It was a fine idea in theory. Problem was, no one wanted to take a job.

Source: theguardian