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Sanconnie to make France debut against Italy
By Christopher Devine
Fabien Sanconnie will make his France debut in Saturday's Six Nations clash with Italy in Rome as one of four changes to Guy Noves' team.
Brive flanker Sanconnie replaces Bernard Le Roux in the back row, with Charles Ollivon unavailable due to injury, while Castres scrum-half Antoine Dupont is also in line to earn his first cap after being named among the replacements.
The other alterations to France's starting XV see Julien Le Devedec, Brice Dulin and Virimi Vakatawa recalled.
Le Devedec comes in for the injured Sebastien Vahaamahina in the second row (back), with Scott Spedding and Yoann Huget dropping to the bench to accommodate the returns of Dulin and Vakatawa.
Fly-half Francois Trinh-Duc is on the bench after recovering from a broken arm.
Skipper Guilhem Guirado is set to earn his 50th Test cap as France seek to bounce back from defeat to Ireland last time out, which ended their hopes of winning the championship.
#XVdeFrance Découvrez votre XV de départ pour le match en Italie ! Les tricolores feront tout pour défendre nos couleurs ?????? #ITAFRA pic.twitter.com/NYy4eNXJp3
— FF Rugby (@FFRugby) March 9, 2017
France: Brice Dulin, Noa Nakaitaci, Remi Lamerat, Gael Fickou, Virimi Vakatawa, Camille Lopez, Baptiste Serin; Cyril Baille, Guilhem Guirado (captain), Rabah Slimani, Julien Le Devedec, Yoann Maestri, Fabien Sanconnie, Kevin Gourdon, Louis Picamoles.
Replacements: Christopher Tolofua, Uini Atonio, Eddy Ben Arous, Paul Jedrasiak, Bernard Le Roux, Antoine Dupont, Francois Trinh-Duc, Yoann Huget.
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Latest Comments
Nah, that just needs some more variation. Chip kicks, grubber stabs, all those. Will Jordan showed a pretty good reason why the rush was bad for his link up with BB.
If you have an overlap on a rush defense, they naturally cover out and out and leave a huge gap near the ruck.
It also helps if both teams play the same rules. ARs set the offside line 1m past where the last mans feet were😅
Go to commentsYeah nar, should work for sure. I was just asking why would you do it that way?
It could be achieved by outsourcing all your IP and players to New Zealand, Japan, and America, with a big Super competition between those countries raking it in with all of Australia's best talent to help them at a club level. When there is enough of a following and players coming through internally, and from other international countries (starting out like Australia/without a pro scene), for these high profile clubs to compete without a heavy australian base, then RA could use all the money they'd saved over the decades to turn things around at home and fund 4 super sides of their own that would be good enough to compete.
That sounds like a great model to reset the game in Aus. Take a couple of decades to invest in youth and community networks before trying to become professional again. I just suggest most aussies would be a bit more optimistic they can make it work without the two decades without any pro club rugby bit.
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