Ex-France hooker Benjamin Kayser has suggested that Test rugby has moved away from the traditional strengths of the All Blacks and is instead benefiting the likes of the Springboks and Les Bleus.
New Zealand were the dominant side in the early 2010s, claiming back-to-back Rugby World Cup titles in 2011 and 2015, but the landscape has changed since then.
It was the Springboks who were successful in 2019 and 2023, while France have put themselves back among the sport’s elite.
Both teams were criticised in the past for not moving with the times, with the emphasis placed on tempo and having a high skill set.
However, size, set-piece and kicking is now more important than ever, which has been demonstrated by the Boks’ recent World Cup successes.
Kayser was speaking on The Good, The Bad and The Rugby podcast where he looked at France’s upturn in form since 2020.
‘You’re too fat’
“The one element nobody’s really highlighting is you said about winning, but what kind of winning? What’s international winning?” he said.
“It used to be when I was a player, [they said] you needed to play like it was in Super Rugby; it’s about speed, fitness, accuracy, f*** your scrums and your mauls like in the Top 14.
“We were tough, we really ruthless, we were physical, we were great in the set-piece, but as soon as you got to international rugby, ‘man you’re too fat, you’re too slow.’ That was the answer.
“England were very proactive in trying to be that fast, pacesetting type of rugby. [But] who wins at the moment? It’s South Africa.”
The former France star could not necessarily explain the reason for the change in dynamics at the top of the sport, but believes that the Top 14 is now the competition to be in to prepare players for the rigours of Test rugby.
“I don’t know if it’s the adaptation of the rules, I don’t know whether it’s because they’ve (Springboks) won and when you win, you dictate what rugby should look like. I don’t know, I don’t know that,” he said.
“But New Zealand hasn’t won the World Cup for the last two times, South Africa has. The most physical teams do tend to impose their force and that’s why I’m going back to the Top 14 being so intense.
“Finally, it’s the number one weapon to prepare for international rugby because you’re used to that intensity, that ruthlessness.”
France rise, England fall
In comparison to France, who are now one of the best sides in the world, England have faltered and have lost seven of their last nine matches.
Those two teams go head-to-head at Twickenham on Saturday in ‘Le Crunch’, with Les Bleus very much favourites for the encounter.
Englishmen and women are currently attempting to work out why it is going wrong for Steve Borthwick’s team, something Kayser knows well having been part of a struggling French outfit.
“I find this almost funny because the list of excuses, or reasons, why the performance is not there – which Hask (former England flanker James Haskell) said – is what I repeated 15 times when I was an international player,” he said.
“This grey zone of international rugby that’s so ruthless between the top and the bottom, I was exactly in it.
“We were the French team that thought, ‘this year, we’re going to go down to Ireland and we’re going to do well’, and we were just off it.
“There were all the excuses of ‘the training squad is too little, the club’s don’t really care about the French team’ etc. It’s taken us forever and it’s taken us to be pushed down the stairs.”
France are now in a much stronger position having improved their age-grade pathways and struck a deal with the Top 14 clubs to improve their chances at Test level.
However, Kayser insists that French rugby is in a far from perfect situation and that it could all go wrong at any moment.
‘Fragile’ France-Top 14 deal
“It’s still a very, very fragile environment. That deal which was the allocation of international players to the French team had to be renegotiated,” he added.
“All of a sudden, it wasn’t the same thing because Bernard Laporte, the federation president who was the mastermind behind Fabien Galthie’s success, is not there and the clubs got a little bit tighter.
“There’s a lot to it, it’s a very fragile model, but when I hear, ‘the financial power of France…’ Lads, let’s get the numbers out, it’s not exactly what you think.
“Without billionaires behind us, we would not be where we are, but we launched something that was losing a ton of money for a long, long time.
“Now that we’re winning, all of a sudden we’re catching up and it’s working, but it’s still very fragile.”
Src: Planetrugby.com - https://www.planetrugby.com/news/ex-france-star-why-les-bleus-and-springboks-have-the-edge-over-all-blacks-after-super-rugbys-f-your-scrums-and-mauls-policy
