In four years of working with Marc Lièvremont, this was the first time Dave Ellis had shared a press conference with his head coach. Managing to keep a straight face, he listened with astonishment as the Frenchman described his latest problem with his players, who had contravened the previous night's instructions by going out to celebrate their victory over Wales.
Virtually unprompted, Lièvremont spoke of his disappointment that the players could not be trusted. "I told them what I thought of them – that they're a bunch of undisciplined spoilt brats, disobedient, sometimes selfish, always complaining, always whining," he said. Then he muttered something about how he didn't suppose that a few cigarettes and a dessert at the end of dinner would make much difference to their performance against the All Blacks in Sunday's final.
"Some of the things he said, I would never say," Ellis remarked after Lièvremont had left the hall. "Never. But he tells it as it is. I think part of him must come from Yorkshire. He got stuck into the players this morning because that's how he felt. And when you ask him a question about it, he tells you how he feels."
Ellis is a Yorkshireman who served his apprenticeship in rugby league before switching to union as a defence coach in France, working successfully with Racing Club de Paris and Bordeaux-Bègles before Bernard Laporte invited him to join the France coaching team in 1999 – for no pay, to begin with, since there was no budget. Ellis has worked with France on a part-time basis ever since, while plying his trade with Gloucester and London Irish, whom he left in June to concentrate on the campaign in New Zealand.
"It's my third World Cup and I wanted to make it my best," he said. "I just wanted to give 100% concentration to the job in hand. I was determined that we were going to go further than we did in the last two, and we have. I put every single minute into it."
Saturday's first semi-final was in one respect a direct contest between two Englishmen: Ellis and Shaun Edwards, the Lancastrian former rugby league hero who has spent the last four years as Wales's defence coach, under Warren Gatland. Not surprisingly, there is no love lost between them. Ellis was happy to mention that he believed most of France's pre-match motivation work had been done by showing the players what the Welsh coaches had been saying in the newspapers.
"Shaun Edwards was speaking, and Warren Gatland. Everybody was saying, oh, Jamie Roberts this and George North that. So it must have had a major psychological effect on the Welsh when Roberts was getting knocked on his arse, George North was getting knocked on his arse, the loose forwards were getting knocked back, there's no go-forward and James Hook was going, 'What do I do next?' We were pretty quiet last week. We just listened to what other people had to say."
He was particularly delighted that Morgan Parra, Lièvremont's controversial choice at fly-half, had come third in the tackle count, with 14 plaquages, behind only the back-row men Thierry Dusautoir and Julien Bonnaire. "Everybody criticised Marc about Morgan Parra playing at 10," he said, "but you've got to take your hat off to him. It was a hell of a choice."
Not that he had lacked respect for Wales. "The reason we performed so well in defence is because they were a major threat in attack," he said. "They played more football because that's the way they play, and they came within a whisker of winning the game. I watched Leigh Halfpenny's kick on the video and it missed by this much." He held his hands a foot or so apart. "But we didn't have much luck in 2003 or 2007. We've had a bit of luck this time around. So you just take it."
His contract with France ends with this tournament. What next? "I'll probably go and have some fish and chips at Harry Ramsden. I have no plans at all." It's not hard to see that he would like to be more widely appreciated at home. So what if England came calling? "You never rule out anything."
Wheldon's death provokes pain and poetry
Something like the death of the double Indy 500 winner Dan Wheldon on Sunday certainly exposes the best and worst of the folks out there in the digital universe. What do you say about the people who appended such comments to the YouTube footage of the fatal crash as "Why do they cut away from the onboard cam? We could have seen the crash better" or "Dan Wheldon was an amature (sic), shouldn't been (sic) driving"?
On the other hand there was the actress Ashley Judd, wife of Dario Franchitti, who was at the Las Vegas track to see her husband crowned IndyCar champion for a fourth time but instead witnessed the death of a friend. Judd went straight on Twitter with a few lines from a favourite John Donne sonnet: "Death be not proud, though some have called thee / Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so, / For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow, / Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me …"
Bad boy talks a good game
Antonio Cassano is the 29-year-old bad boy of Italian football, and after scoring two goals against Northern Ireland last week the striker discussed his career with a rather wonderful candour. "Sport gives you back what you put into it," he said. "I didn't put enough in, so I didn't get much out. If [Gigi] Buffon won 10 times as much as me, it's because he was the absolute No1 in his role. I was one of many." Then he talked about his relationship with journalists. "I'm entirely sure 70% of the problem is me, but when I get it right 30% of the time, the media still say I'm wrong. Besides, after me you'll have Mario Balotelli to talk about for the next 10 years! He's another good character for you."
Some robust criticism
When I hear the phrase "going forward" or the word "robust" from a management type, I start to fear I may be in the presence of a David Brent. When Rob Andrew sat next to Martin Johnson at a press conference last week to discuss his role in charge of an official RFU inquiry into the failure of the World Cup campaign, there were six "going forwards" and four "robusts". Enough said.
richard.williams@theguardian.com
