Scotland 6 France 27: If this new-look France is indeed a work in progress, their next steps should be worth watching.
It would be unfair to Marc Lièvremont and his players to suggest they are anything like the finished article. They will meet sterner opposition, too. To start with they will also now meet opponents who know what they are up against.
Even so, on the evidence of yesterday, Lièvremont and his fellow coaches, Didier Retière and Emile Ntamack, have much to be excited about. There can be only one regret as far as the fans are concerned: why were players such as Vincent Clerc and Cedric Heymans not able to play like this under their previous coach, especially in the World Cup last autumn? France did not counterattack with such gusto, so often, in eight years under Bernard Laporte, although the foundations laid by "Crazy Bernie" were clear yesterday: a rock-solid defence, marshalled by the Englishman David Ellis, and stern discipline.
Lièvremont had given France the licence to make mistakes but the match opened with Dan Parks kicking out on the full and in the final minutes the howlers were all committed by the hosts, who threw away any chance of gaining respectability with a series of nightmarish errors.
"I was surprised by the gap we opened up," said the scrumhalf Jean-Baptiste Elissalde, who had predicted potential disaster for Lièvremont's new-look France here. "It's never easy coming here to start the championship, as we saw two years ago when we lost. I expected Scotland to be far more rugged and put more volume on the game."
There was hard graft from forwards with a point to prove, such as William Servat and the captain Lionel Nallet. Thierry Dusautoir tackled as hard as he had against New Zealand in October, while yet another backrow gem has been unearthed in Fulgence Ouedraogo, a grafter in the Serge Betsen mould.
From a diverse side put together in five days it was a huge achievement.
"I couldn't be happier with the mind-set," said Lièvremont. "The players were enterprising, they imposed themselves on the game, which was important given the way the Scots can start a match. Obviously not everything was perfect but I was delighted with the ambition, the fact that we didn't allow Scotland to develop their game. We got into them in every area."
Clerc was running Scottish kicks from the off, along with his fellow winger Julien Malzieu, a rangy, raw-boned hulk of a man, but it was Scotland who scored first, Parks landing a simple drop-goal. That, however, was as good as it got for Frank Hadden's side, who went behind in the 12th minute, to a gem of a try created by stunning close passes - one definitely forward - between Heymans and Clerc.
A massive penalty from just inside the France half somehow found the minimum height necessary a few minutes later, and then, with just after a quarter of the match gone, came a double blow for the home side, courtesy of their outhalf's boot.
First Parks missed a simple goal, then virtually from the restart France were awarded a penalty, which Malzieu tapped from the half-way line, only to find his speculative kick ahead bounce up into his arms from the Scottish number 10's boot. Instead of being within four points, Scotland were 14 behind.
France were not perfect, which must have made it all the more frustrating for Hadden. Their clearance kicks rarely went to touch but the Scottish counters went straight into France's defence line. The scrum wobbled - the French, unthinkably, were once driven off their own ball - but things firmed up when Nicolas Mas came on for the debutant Julien Brugnaut.
"We have plenty to work on," said Lièvremont, but there was true purpose in the back three's runs, one of which culminated in Clerc hitting a flat pass from David Skrela and running onto his own kick.
The shackles are off. France can look at an interesting future, perhaps one of beauty as well as the beast.
SCOTLAND: Lamont; Walker, De Luca, Henderson, Webster; Parks, Blair; Jacobsen, Ford, Murray; Hines, Hamilton; White, Barclay, Callam. Replacements: Brown for Callam (50 mins), MacLeod for Hamilton (54 mins), Kerr for Murray (58 mins), Southwell for Lamont, Paterson for Parks (both 61 mins), Cusiter for Blair (65 mins), Thomson for Ford (73 mins).
FRANCE: Heymans; Malzieu, Marty, Traille, Clerc; Trinh-Duc, Elissalde; Faure, Servat, Brugnaut; Nallet, Jacquet; Ouedraogo, Dusautoir, Vermeulen. Replacements: Szarzewski for Servat, Mas for Brugnaut (both 50 mins), Bonnaire for Vermeulen (54 mins), Skrela for Trinh-Duc (58 mins), Mela for Jacquet (62 mins), Parra for Elissalde (65 mins), Rougerie for Clerc (72 mins).
Referee: A Rolland(Ireland).
