A definitive guide to the French Halfback Class of 2018

Whilst in the wider world they are known for their love of cheese, garlic, surrendering, berets, expensive wine, movies about teenagers who fancy their mums, wearing onions around their neck, mopeds, and inspiring national stereotypes, in rugby the French are associated with a totally different group of clichés. But just as they begin to dispel the myth that “You never know which French team will turn up” (Nowadays we know it’s usually a shit one), Jacques Brunel’s side has decided to double down on another old favourite. So, with the French set to revive their halfback carosel and play ten different halfbacks in three games, it’s fallen on Blood & Mud to present you, the humble, confused rugbyman, with your definitive guide to everyone in contention to wear the nine and ten jerseys for France this Six Nations campaign…

 

THE SCRUM-HALVES

Maxime Machenaud

An experienced scrum-half who went into this Six Nations with a staggering 31 French caps at scrum-half. Machenaud rose through the ranks at Bordeaux-Begles (A club I still want to refer to as ‘The Bordeaux Beagles’) before joining his current side, Racing 92, in 2012. He also briefly played for Agen in between, but bringing that up would have ruined the flow of the sentence. Machenaud has the kind of beautiful, bouncy hair that anybody over the age of 40 finds annoying, yet also captures the jealousy of those yet to succumb to male pattern baldness. As a player, he’s one of those bizarre scrum-halves who emerged as a lively, snipey lad, but has slowly become more of a game-manager as time has aged his bones. I can also report that he has very firm buttocks, as I accidentally touched them during a pitch invasion following the 2016 Champions’ Cup semi-final between Racing and Leicester Tigers.

 

Antonie Du Pont

Just 21 years old, Du Pont looks a bit like a bedside cabinet that didn’t quite get turned back into a human properly at the end of Beauty and the Beast. Du Pont is incredibly quick of both feet and thought, a symbiotic relationship he maintains by keeping his brain in his knee so it’s never far from his little running boots. He is currently enrolled at L’École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq, a drama school focused on physical theatre and performance whose alumni include Academy Award winner Geoffery Rush and the face of the phrase “Oh, what else has he been in?” himself, Toby Jones. However, despite his acting background, his performance as ‘Man with concussion’ during the game against Ireland left something to be desired.

 

Baptise Serin

A beautiful man whose stunningly French good looks beguile the other team into making mistakes. By being so boyishly pretty, the opposition backrow feel too guilty to tackle him, instead opting to let him waltz through the defence on his gloriously spindly pincers. A genius tactic developed by France based on the prototype of Mike Phillips, who could have had a similar effect on defences, if only he hadn’t ruined his chances of utilising his supremely handsome exterior by being a twat.

 

Morgan Parra

Professional cheeky shitbag Parra has been out of favour with the French management for almost five years now, probably because he seems like the kind of person who always eats the last slice of a pizza, even if he hates the flavour. He also, however, reads the game as well as any scrum-half out there and, like so many men who look like Alan Rickman have managed to do before him, has managed to translate his petty greed into twisted genius. Genuinely world-class on his day, and even off his day he’s a nightmare to play against.

 

Baptiste Couillard

When you type the name of recent French call-up Baptiste Couillard into Google, you get a page about a farmer from Quebec. Going off this first result, Couillard is more of a game-manager scrum-half, great at commanding his forwards like cattle. However, he may not be fit to take part in this Six Nations, seeing as he died at the age of 74 in 1889.

 

Charlie Chugglebox

A recent convert to rugby union, Chugglebox is a great prospect who joined Castres Olypique at the start of this season after representing France in showjumping at the 2016 Olympic Games. Chugglebox’s passing needs some work, but he has shown real promise for Castres this season, in many games carrying his teammates on his back. With his remarkable acceleration and agility, it’s entirely possible that Charlie Chugglebox could overtake Alex Cuthbert as the best horse to ever play international rugby.

 

THE FLY-HALVES

 

Matthieu Jalibert

Nicknamed ‘Jailbait’ because he is so young that if you fucked him you would end up in jail, Jalibert is rated very highly by the French management. Jalibert is very quick and has a real affinity for the chip-kick, a skill he declared his “one true love” in an interview I just made up.  Jacques Brunel has said he views Jalibert as the long-term incumbent of the French number ten shirt, so once he recovers from his injury set-backs we could be seeing Jalibert play fly-half for France for months to come.

 

Lionel Beauxis

Lionel Beauxis is famous for doing one of the most brilliantly, hilariously, pointlessly stupid things I’ve ever seen on a rugby pitch. However, that volley was nothing compared to Brunel’s decision to call 32-year-old Beauxis up. The phrase ‘Kick the leather off it’ has been largely redundant since rugby balls started being made out of rubber in ‘90s, but Beauxis boots the ball so often that Gilbert started covering matchballs for games Beauxis plays with a thin layer of leather, taken from one of the cows on Baptiste Coulliard’s farm, so as to prevent the ball being worn down into a flat, egg-shaped pulp. This lead to mass hysteria when he actually passed the ball a fair amount against Scotland, albeit usually with disastrous results.

 

Matthieu Belleau

As with anyone involved with Blood & Mud, it’s all too often that I’m accused of being overly negative towards incredibly talented players. And it’s all too easy to be negative when writing an article like this; to look for the easy comic angle instead of finding the best in someone, even though you’re capable of finding it. Over the last few years, I’ve tried to make a concerted effort to be more generous to players. To look for the best in them. I genuinely believe nobody gets to the top of the game without being extremely talented, without being a star at every other imaginable level of rugby. Matthieu Belleau is the exception that proves the rule. Matthieu Belleau is shit.

 

Francois Trinh-Duc

An experienced fly-half with a surname that, pre-hyphen, would be very useful in Scrabble. Trinh-Duc has won 63 caps over the period of ten years in which he was almost always France’s best ten. Able to manage and mix-and-match a game, a poor run of form at the start of this season saw Trinh-Duc dropped in favour of The Inexplicable Mr Belleau. Writing this paragraph also gave me a perfect excuse to revisit his incredible dummy in the 2011 World Cup Final, and his ultimately-short penalty attempt which, if successful, would have made France the weirdest World Cup winners ever.

 

Jean Dujardin

The Academy Award-winning star of The Artist and Wolf of Wall Street, Jean Dujardin was an openside flanker as a kid, but hasn’t played rugby for 23 years, which makes him the obvious candidate to take over the French fly-half position this Six Nations. If put in to partner Antonie du Pont, France could well have their own answer to the Haka in the form of a two-man tap dance with a dog.

 

Jean-Marc Doussain

Jean-Marc Doussain is the only player to ever win his first cap in a World Cup Final. That trivia question answer will stay in the mind longer than any performance Doussain has ever put in wearing either nine or ten. Doussain made his name as a perfectly decent but uninspiring scrum-half, but has since converted to be a very silly fly-half. His decision making has all the careful consideration of a game of Bop It! and he kicks with the accuracy of a chicken. He isn’t currently in the France squad, but with Freddie Michelak retiring and such a patchy track record, it’s only a matter of time until Jacques Brunel simply can’t resist.

 

Louis Sizzle

A simple doodle done by Jacques Brunel in a notebook during a selection meeting, the France coach became very attached to Sizzle very quickly. Said meeting descended into Brunel trying to talk the other coaches into letting him pick his drawing at 10. The other selectors were unconvinced, citing a lack of gametime in the Top14. Having been released to play for Lyon, the following weekend pundits everywhere were amazed by the performance put in by a crude stickman in an oversized pair of boots. Disregarding one incident in which he was confused for one of the goalposts, he took to the pitch like it were a notebook. If he can work on his tackling (He currently folds at the slightest challenge), Sizzle may well be an option for France by the end of the tournament.

 

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