The France coach Bernard Laporte's outburst against "bourgeois" Parisian spectators after his side's bizarre victory over Ireland on Saturday has earned him a public reprimand from the French federation president Bernard Lapasset, who said that Laporte had been "clumsy" and had "crossed the yellow line".

"These are clumsy words, a moment of distraction due to pressure," Lapasset told the newspaper Le Parisien. "It's normal for a coach to defend his players, it's done with talent and passion, but you mustn't descend to excess. Bernard crossed the yellow line. He knows he has gone too far."

The president is no doubt well aware of his federation's need to fill stadiums during the 2007 World Cup, when rugby will need to draw fans from beyond its traditional southern and south-western heartlands. Tickets will go on full public sale in April, following this Six Nations tournament.

Lapasset said he would not ask his coach to apologise, even though this is not the first time Laporte has made such controversial outbursts. Most famously, he once denigrated his predecessor Pierre Villepreux with a sexually related insult.

As well as trying to rebuild relations with the Paris public in the build-up to France's match against Italy on February 25th, Laporte will have other worries.

"The Kaiser" has spent the last six years trying to instill composure and calmness into France. On Saturday's showing, perhaps it is time for him to abandon what appears to be an unequal struggle and embrace the inner Latin that apparently lurks, headstrong and unpredictable but clearly immutable, inside all French rugby men.

While concurring with Laporte and senior players that Saturday's team had fallen apart physically against Ireland, partly due to their efforts in the week after the defeat in Scotland, the France scrum-half Jean-Baptiste Elissalde said he felt the tendency of Les Bleus to switch off in the second half was a Latin characteristic.

"Mentally we switched off as well. It's a French speciality. We had a very good November, everyone built us up enormously, the media in particular after this month which everyone said was 'fantastic' - then we fell very low against Scotland.

"I'd said there was a danger and I was right, (against Ireland) our Latin character came through - 50 fine minutes, then 30 which weren't so good.

"It's certainly part of our Latin mindset, and our mental attitude is something we need to work on as a group. We have to learn not to let go in our heads, to be more professional. We have to work on these mental lapses."

Elissalde does not think that citing the French character as an explanation for the national team's inconsistency is merely a glib reflex for journalists.

"I sincerely believe it is like that. We are brought up like little rich boys and we feel when we get what we want, why hurt ourselves a little bit more?

"It's part of the way we are raised. It's typically French. In that area we need to learn to copy the Anglo-Saxons. I don't know why they are (consistent) and we aren't. It's incredible."