Galthie vows to give everything against England

3.10pm

By JAMES LAWTON

Three times he has operated on or around the mountain top of world rugby. Three times he has come away from a World Cup carrying baggage balanced between angst and glory.

And so now, when so many feel he should be almost tasting a final moment of fulfilment, you expect to find 34-year-old French captain Fabien Galthie showing at least a hint of Napoleon's fever at the gates of Moscow.

But not yet, not on this chill, blustery morning at Bondi Beach, Josephine, and maybe not ever.

"I know it will be over, one way or the other, very soon", Galthie tells you. "But if this is my last match for France against England, if we fail to make it to the final, I will not worry so much - not if I go back to my country knowing that I have not let it down, that the boys and I have done the best we could for France.

"Why are we so calm? Why am I so calm? There are various reasons and part of it is in our culture. But there is a bigger reason than that, I think. We are together and we feel together, and that is perfect for any team. I am the captain, but I do not want to stand alone just thinking that this could be my last match if we lost to England.

"If you are lucky, as I have been, you play a lot of matches, you know how it is to win and lose, but the important thing always is to look back and be able to say, 'I couldn't have done any more'. That is my last ambition now, and however it turns out against the English, or maybe in the final, that is how it will remain.

"When you play at any level you can only think of now. How have I prepared? Have I done my best? Am I living for this moment which will never come again? Have I gone to the edge with everything I have?"

He talks like a poet and, with looks in the best tradition of Alain Delon, when he smiles at an Australian girl in the lobby of the team hotel she confesses to at least one desire. Surprisingly, it is to throw a curtsy, but then Galthie has also developed a touch of the regal.

The team manager, the marvellous old centre Jo Masso, says: "He is our man because we know how much he loves the fight. "Don't think he is kidding you when he says that winning the World Cup is not the most important thing. "Of course he wants it like we all want it, but he wants more than anything to believe that everything that could have been done has been done.

"I have known Fabien a long time and I have known the game even longer, and I knew that we couldn't have a finer man to lead us. He is a big-match player. He comes alive when the stakes are high. When Bernard (Laporte, the coach) sits in the stand before the match he knows that his work is in good hands. The captain becomes the coach, the complete leader."

He is the extraordinary rugby player, the one whose will and nous make it possible, on the very best of days, to exceed by far the sum of his parts. England still remember vividly one of the best of those days at the Stade de France 18 months ago.

Galthie may lack the power of a Gareth Edwards, the rocket pass, the searing capacity to launch himself so witheringly from the base of the scrum, but that day against England Galthie was a rugby god. His effect was killing, his decision-making Solomonesque.

He is of the country around Cahors in south-west France. His family sold cattle. He has chased the glory on the rugby field in the shadow of the Pyrenees, and if sometimes it has been elusive, the game has probed his less than constantly overpowering talent. It has, he says, also shown him its "most beautiful face".

Four years ago in Cardiff, he came down from the peak achieved a week earlier at Twickenham, when the favourites New Zealand were beaten in a game that took the breath away. Later, the great Welsh fly-half Jonathan Davies said he thought it was probably the greatest match he had seen but in the final, the Australians could see that the French had had their moment and it was gone.

"That was something incredible to go through," Galthie says. "We saw both sides of it but that is history and now we have the chance to make new history."

Yes, he thinks there is something remarkable about the composure that his players have demonstrated in recent weeks, coming through the field so smoothly, like a thoroughbred gathered for the big push at Chantilly or Longchamp, but then he asks, "How could you be stupid enough to discount the English? We don't deserve any prizes for not doing so. They haven't shown their best form perhaps but they are still alive and dangerous and strong. They've done OK, they're in the semi-final ... everything is level."

Maybe so, but the French do look so impossibly composed off the field; they still carry that even mood displayed so convincingly in the evisceration of the Scots and then, when it mattered, the Irish. Says Galthie: "A little bit of it is our way of life, the style of our people. It is also because for 16 weeks we have prepared very well and at the back of our minds we have always had one objective: to keep a good atmosphere, a good ambience and be very honest with each other.

"We have tried not to be just team-mates but good friends and of course you fight at your hardest for the interests of your best friends. I think this feeling now joins all our players together. "For me, yes, it is the end of something very fine but, like everybody else, before I can take anything from it I have to give, and that is my most important role as a captain. "I have to give everything I have.

"So, the most important thing now is to stand with the boys. Every time I go to train or to play, I say to myself, 'You cannot stand alone. You are nothing without the team'. Until I stop playing, my life is not complete without the boys around me working together.

"Yes, of course I fear defeat. It is the dark side of playing sport and always you want to be in the sun. But your best chance of having that is knowing that there is one thing worse than losing. It is having to live with the fact that you could have done more, and if you had done, maybe everything would have been different."

Now, as England confirm their belief that the struggling Jonny Wilkinson needs the reinforcement of the veteran Mike Catt beside him as an extra fly-half, at the cost of the defensive weight of the centre Mike Tindall, the old warrior Maso cannot resist a little jab.

"For us," Maso says, "Fabien and Freddy (Galthie's sleek young inside back partner and tournament star Frederic Michalak) are like a couple. We would hate for them to have a row, hate to have somebody come between them. The last thing we want is a menage a trois." Or even a Holy Trinity. France have Fabien Galthie, and that, they believe, is all the leadership they need.

- INDEPENDENT