Between moments of cohesion and intense sessions under the burning sun of the Côte d’Azur, the 42 players summoned to prepare for the 2023 World Cup by the coach of the XV of France Fabien Galthié “got into the hard” during their first week of training. at Monaco. “We are slain!” Montpellier full-back Arthur Vincent joked last Tuesday after training at the Louis II stadium, carried out, like all the others in full sun, at 2:00 p.m.
“Monday (last, editor’s note), it was the first in the series when we returned from vacation and we were a little taken aback”, admitted Friday the second line of the Toulouse stadium, Thibaud Flament, referring to “very physical training in full dodger”. An opinion shared by Bordeaux-Bègles scrum-half Maxime Lucu: “The objective is to put yourself in the hard, not to be afraid to put yourself in the red and see how you assimilate that”. On Friday, the Blues thus carried out an “explosive work with sprints of 25 to 30 meters”, he explained. “We went station by station, to get gears and to engorge the thighs and hamstrings. We did five, six sprints, at high intensity, “said Antoine Dupont’s understudy, insisting on the “precision” given to each session. Before concluding: “We know that we will go up crescendo and that next week will be harder”.
This intensity and this desire to lead their flock the hard way are completely taken on by the management, who thus wish to test the reaction of the players in the face of “weak moments” in matches, when you are physically subjected and you have to draw on the most deep within yourself to tear yourself away and be efficient until the end. With a mantra: do better than in 2019 before Japan, where the players had spent their preparation trying to catch up with the physical level of their opponents.
These first weeks of very dense training must also serve to best prepare the Blues for current rugby, with “certain matches (which) will very closely affect the forty-five minutes of effective playing time”, according to Thibaud Giroud, their director. performance. “The big interest is to be able to chain long sequences and very explosive sequences,” he explained on Tuesday. “We must not be impacted on these long sequences to have the ability to resume acceleration afterwards, especially for the front eight”. Hence players arriving sweaty at press conferences, like the third line of La Rochelle Grégory Alldritt, not against “a few degrees less”.
And there was no question of taking a dip in the nearby Mediterranean to cool off: “We have less access to cold baths, to cryotherapy”, Lucu specified, which was confirmed by the healthy eating of the Blues Bruno Boussagol: “These forms of recovery are not accepted on this first part of the course”. Fortunately, if the strictly sporting sessions are difficult, there is still a lot of time “off”, to “play cards, watch films” detailed Alldritt on Tuesday, even if the players did not really have the opportunity to walk around on the Rock.
This is why, on Saturday, a “surprise” outing was organized by Raphaël Ibanez, the manager of the Blues, and William Servat, forwards coach. According to Laurent Labit, who takes care of the attack, “it’s also good to be able to enjoy between us, it’s important to exchange and also know the men”. “We wanted these conditions, difficult (…) because we know that opposite, we have players who, the more the pressure increases, the more they feast”, estimated he. “For them, it’s a privilege.”
