KEY POINTS:
PARIS - It has been the November from hell for French rugby fans. First, the former captain of les Bleus, Marc Cecillon, was sentenced to 20 years' jail for murdering his wife after a trial that exposed dark downsides of a top-flight career with the oval ball in
France.
Then came the demolition of the national side by an All Black team that left the French media grappling for superlatives to describe their despair.
The run-up to the match in Lyons had been billed as a clash of the titans, of the top test-playing nations of the northern and southern hemispheres going head to head.
Nourished on lamb chops and Steinlager, the All Blacks were naturally bigger and stronger, but le Coq Francais would bamboozle the visitors with flair and fire.
Alas, the 47-3 outcome was not so much titan as the Titanic, a historic defeat so awful, so emphatic that no one in this nation of 60 million people could offer any sensible excuses.
The weather, the pitch, the crowd, the refereeing - none of these could be faulted. Even the desperate fallback of blaming psychological warfare could not be invoked, as the gentlemanly Kiwis used "le haka soft" rather than the macabre throat-cutting version. For the first time, TV viewers were treated to French subtitles of the haka so there were no complaints from those watching at home.
"La debacle" was the headline in the Le Parisien. "There are the All Blacks ... and the rest of the world," lamented Ouest-France. Le Monde summed it up: "France was submerged by a black tide."
Forget the Marseillaise - this was Alouette, the children's song about a bird being defeathered for the pot.
It was left to the bloggers to suggest darker forces had been at work.
"I admit I did wonder after the match in Lyons last night whether the All Blacks had been doped," said a contributor to a rugby website. "The difference in physical conditions between the two teams was so blatant."
On Thursday, Le Parisien published a list of French victories over the All Blacks in the hope of reviving the nation's spirits before tomorrow's encounter at the Stade de France in Paris.
One survey found only one in seven of French fans believe their team can win. Nearly two-thirds predict their team will, at best, narrow the gap.
More than 5.4 million television viewers tuned into last weekend's match. TV bosses must surely be wondering whether so many will tune in for what could be another national humiliation.
In the southwest of France, the rugby heartland in this predominantly soccer-playing nation, Father Michel Devert is scheduled to say a special mass before the Paris showdown - an appropriate move, given that Le Monde said that only "a miracle" could save Bernard Laporte's side.
Devert, who is parish priest at the chapel of Our Lady of Rugby in Larriviere, described the All Blacks as "wonderful, extraordinary".
"Our poor Bleus are strong but not that strong," he told the Herald.
The mayor of Larriviere, Claude Milet, said a wake-like pall settled over the town after the Lyons defeat. "The atmosphere was terrible. We were all crying at mass on Sunday," he said.
But, like supporters everywhere, France's rugby fans are quick to forgive their team's flaws and even quicker to seize on optimism.
"Yep, we took a pasting but, come on, keep the faith," one Bleus supporter said. "There's still a year to go [to the World Cup] and the statistics are in our favour. The All Blacks have been favourites for a long time but they haven't been world champions since 1987 and let's not forget 1999, when they ran all over us in a test match and then choked in the [Cup's] semifinals. Allez les Bleus."
