France coach defends team's toughness amidst criticism of leaky defence

Les Bleus shipped five tries as they were destroyed by Ireland in last Friday's Six Nations opener in Marseille, their first match since losing four in an agonising 29-28 World Cup quarter-final defeat in Paris in October.

Speaking ahead of Saturday's showdown with Scotland, the defence coach Edwards was in a tetchy mood when grilled about their leakiness at Friday's press conference at Murrayfield.

"We had the best defence at the World Cup," he retorted bluntly, appearing to have taken offence at the question.

When it was put to him that he seemed angry, Englishman Edwards - who has been part of the France set-up since November 2019 - responded: "I am normally angry when we lose. It means a lot to me and I know how much it means to the people of France, the France supporters.

"In the last four years we have a 75 per cent win ratio, 80 per cent sometimes. It (the Ireland game) is the only time I feel we did not perform anywhere near the level we normally do."

Edwards is confident there will be a positive French response at Murrayfield.

"We haven't played so poorly in the last four years," he said. "As I said, that was our one really poor performance against one of the top two teams in the world, but we're here to improve tomorrow and we can't wait for the game to begin.

"We need to give a better account of ourselves in attack, defence, our kicking game, the set-piece. We know we're up against a formidable opponent in Scotland, who have been ranked in the top five in the last 12 months.

"We know we're in for a tough game but we just want to give a better account of ourselves and obviously a victory would be nice as well."

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