KEY POINTS:
MARSEILLE - The headlines said it all.
"La Maree Noire" (The Black Tide) and "La Punition Black" (The Black Punishment) conveyed the sense of utter dejection the day after France were pummelled 45-6 by the All Blacks in Paris two years ago.
And the future looked nothing but
dark for their bespectacled coach, Bernard Laporte, a man who many felt was lucky to survive the previous year's fourth placing at the World Cup.
Yet survive he did. The 42-year-old now has the reins of a team recovered from one of their most humbling nights and who are accelerating towards the World Cup they host next year at the speed of a French bullet train.
A thorough, studious man, Laporte has always divided opinion with his methods -- not hard to do in a land where rugby isn't the biggest sport but which has passion pumping through its veins at every level.
He succeeded Pierre Villepreux and Jean-Claude Skrela as the first fully professional French coach after the 1999 World Cup, inheriting a team who had just shocked the All Blacks in the semifinal but succumbed meekly in the final to Australia.
It was this French penchant for picking and choosing their moments -- for soaring to great heights only on a whim -- that needed addressing.
The romantic, flamboyant aspects of the French had to blend with some forward grit, Laporte believed.
After all, he grew up in Gaillac, a market town in south-east France better known for developing rugged forwards.
In 1991, he captained Begles-Bordeaux to the French championship -- a team whose only tactic, "the tortoise", consisted of surrounding the ball within a platoon of forwards and grinding remorselessly ahead.
As a coach, Laporte asked the Stade Francais team to do something similar and it worked, climbing from the third division in 1995 to French champions three years later.
The national post followed but 77 tests later -- made up of a nicely-rounded 50 wins, 25 losses and two draws -- it remains debateable whether consistency has been discovered.
Les Bleus have won 10 of their last 11 tests but Laporte has been awaiting the All Blacks' return as the litmus test.
Many questions will be answered in their test at Lyon on Sunday morning (NZT), and again at Paris a week later.
And how much the French have improved since 2004 will provide a good pointer to their chances of emulating the French soccer team of 1998 and claiming their sport's ultimate prize for the first time on home soil next year.
A canny operator, Laporte will give them their best chance yet, having won over the right people at the top of the game.
He recently struck a compensation deal with the all-powerful French Rugby Federation (FFR), which contracts the players, allowing Laporte to have his squad continuously through the Six Nations early next year, a period of seven weeks.
His top players, who already have massive resources thrown at them, will then be granted a four-week rest when the club season ends in June, ensuring they're fresh before tackling three months of solid World Cup preparation.
It means few, if any, of his World Cup squad will be in the team who play two tests in New Zealand next year, something that will be of minimal concern to a man who faces a comparable degree of pressure to win the big prize as his All Blacks counterpart Graham Henry, 18 years his senior.
Laporte has succeeded, to a degree, in reducing the size of the massive French domestic season and has also won back the favour of the influential French media, who now describe him as a "bon client" (good client).
It hasn't always been as cheery for the former halfback.
After crashing to New Zealand at the 2003 World Cup third-placed playoff, Laporte came under severe attack, accused of selecting injured players and of defending the actions of South African-born prop Pieter de Villiers, who tested positive for cocaine and ecstacy a year earlier.
Former coaches Pierre Berbizier and Villepreux, both long-time Laporte critics, ramped up the vitriol that had dogged Laporte for some time.
After years of experimenting, when would he settle on a halves combination? Why did the starry backs from Toulouse not perform like they did at club level? And why did France have no plan B when they fell behind?
Laporte agreed to work more closely with national director of coaching Skrela and with club coaches.
In exchange his contract was extended by four years.
He survived another torrent of criticism following the All Blacks' rampage in Paris, a result that prompted a rethink of playing personnel, the adoption of a New Zealand-like rotation policy and change of on-field emphasis to being more confrontational.
France swept aside all four opponents last November and followed it with this year's Six Nations crown, pipping Ireland on points differential to add to the titles won in 2002 and 2004.
And they showcased some ominously good rugby to beat South Africa at Cape Town in June.
The pack looked back to its muscular best and backs such as Damien Traille, Yannick Jauzion and this year's revelation, Florian Fritz, showed the sort of form that could soon transform from unknowns in New Zealand into worrying World Cup entities.
The usually unflappable Laporte perhaps showed the pressure he's been in under in February when he called Paris spectators "pieces of bourgeois shit" after they jeered first five-eighth Frederic Michalak during a defeat of Ireland.
The outburst was widely criticised and he was forced to apologise to French rugby supremo Bernard Lapasset.
The pressure will be over by this time next year.
Laporte will quit after the World Cup, no matter the result, to concentrate on business interests.
If France are victorous, it will never be business as usual for this thinker behind the small steel rimmed glasses.
- NZPA
