He comes out of a historic year 2022, finished undefeated and with the first Grand Slam of French rugby for twelve years.
But the XV of France now switches to historic months, which should lead it to a World Cup in front of its supporters.
The Blues, reunited since Sunday in Capbreton (Landes), will launch 2023 and their Six Nations Tournament with a trip to Italy on Sunday February 5.
Deadlines mentioned by their coach Fabien Galthié, present in London with his captain Antoine Dupont for the traditional media-day.
How do you approach defending your title?
FABIEN GALTHIE.
With much joy, pleasure, happiness.
We have been together since last night (Editor's note: Sunday), apart from Antoine and myself who came here.
The objective is to transform this selection into a team, to speak the same language, to rediscover our basic culture.
We must fix together this mission which is a sacred mission.
It will be a Tournament with three trips, including two major confrontations in Ireland and England.
What does it change ?
We focus first on our gathering, and on this desire to become a team again with these 42 players.
First there will be the match in Italy, then we will go to Dublin (February 11).
With the preparation, we will have in three weeks an overview of this competition.
We are above all focused on these two meetings. We start with Italy, which beat Australia at home in the fall, won in Wales at the end of the Tournament, then we move on to the world number one who is Ireland.
It is a very dense content to experience.
What else does your team need to do to progress in this World Cup year?
Since our takeover of the France team, there have been three years, and thirty games.
There, with the five of the Tournament, then four preparation matches this, then seven until the final of the World Cup, that will make sixteen, or half.
There is therefore the possibility of continuing to grow, and to develop.
We are winning matches, but there are still things to improve.
🏆 @Dupont9A and @FranceRugby are ready to defend their title!
#SixNations |
#SixNations2023 pic.twitter.com/7hSjhdLNeC
— Six Nations (FR) (@SixNations_FR) January 23, 2023
How will you manage your team between this Six Nations Tournament to defend and the prospect of the World Cup?
We listen to them, we ask how they feel.
We need to have these feedbacks on these sensations, they know their bodies better than anyone.
It is important to do some form of audit.
Today, they will have ten interviews to better understand their condition.
This is an important listening time which will then allow us to adjust our agenda.
Then, we have nine major performance indicators to achieve in training.
We adjust our protocol each time, we are fairer and more precise.
On the other hand, you talk about defending a title.
But are we defending a title or are we going to seek a title?
This is a question to be asked between us.
You are on
a 13 game winning streak.
In the event of a Grand Slam, you would equal the absolute record.
What would that mean for this team?
When I hear you talk about this record, it moves me, it does something to me.
But each match is so special, we prepare it as a piece of life in its own right, a dive into the culture of a nation.
Afterwards, we come out of the water, and we look at what happened.
We are on a good series, we still want to live these matches intensely.
We want to stay in the sublime and the marvelous.
French rugby is going through a complicated period behind the scenes.
Can this team allow people to talk about it for other reasons?
It has always been our ambition.
We used three words: gather, share, and federate.
It still animates us and even more so.
We feel a lot of energy, a lot of love.
We just want to keep playing rugby the way we do.
