Wales scramble into second spot after Liam Williams try subdues France

Rarely has a side clinched second place in the Six Nations with less conviction. Wales were outplayed for vast tracts of this game, but are indebted to France for allowing them not only to stay in it but to hold the lead for the vast majority. Wales could not score a single point in the second half, such was France’s stranglehold. But for the personal hell of François Trinh-Duc, who was all over the place for all but the two moments he sparked 10 of France’s points, Wales would surely have lost.

“It wasn’t pretty,” Warren Gatland said, “but we just came here to do a job, which was to win and finish second. With the six-day turnaround, there were too many turnovers, but the boys showed tremendous character in defence against a good French team.”

If France can take any consolation from this it is that their losers’ bonus point condemns England to the ignominy of fifth place. They must know too, though, that it could so easily have been they who leaped above the mid-table to take second behind Ireland – whom, let it not be forgotten, they so nearly beat in round one.

It has been a bitter-sweet championship for the French. Much improved though they are, they are still plagued by familiar failings, principally the ease with which they offer up points to the opposition. The first half was classic.

Wales had to do precious little to acquire their 14 points. It was reminiscent of the game between the two in Paris last year, famous for the 20 minutes of overtime, but notable also for the string of nothing penalties France conceded in nothing parts of the field, which enabled Leigh Halfpenny’s boot to keep Wales in the match.

It was a similar story in round one this year. How differently this championship might have panned out if the French had not gifted Johnny Sexton so many penalty shots in Paris. Penalties are one thing if they are forced by opposition excellence, but France yield too many for no real reason at all. This has not been a good championship for the ill-disciplined.

France’s 10 points of the first half were all earned through their own endeavours. Trinh-Duc’s soaring drop goal in only the fourth minute set the scoreboard in motion, but within seconds he had handed the advantage back to the hosts.

Geoffrey Doumayrou let the restart bounce short of the 10-metre line, and Alun Wyn Jones nicked in to claim the ball. Scott Williams’s chip through was wicked, but an international ought to have reacted better than Trinh-Duc did when it bounced up in his face. He missed it completely, and Liam Williams had the game’s first try.

A silly penalty conceded by each of France’s locks allowed Halfpenny to stretch Wales’s lead to 11-3, before France struck in the most elegant fashion. A smart inside ball by Gaël Fickou set Adrien Pélissié away, and after further deft support play Trinh-Duc sent Fickou streaking through the bedraggled Welsh defence for a beauty of a try.

It was rugby of a different class. If only they could force their opponents to produce the same skills for their points. Alas, France offered up another penalty for Halfpenny on the half-hour for Wales’s four-point lead at the break. They were going to need it.

Perhaps infuriated with themselves, France came out for the second half with purpose. They claimed almost all the possession of the third quarter, midway through which they brought on Camille Chat and Rabah Slimani, the former offering real punch in the loose, the latter taking over at scrum time. Had Trinh-Duc not been suffering one of his days, as loose as he can be brilliant, they might have really made it tell.

As it is, they closed the deficit to just the one point with a Maxime Machenaud penalty, having played the ball out of their own half and worked the phases. The penalty against Scott Williams was harsh, but France were properly back in the game now.

Still they tried to give Wales every chance, one forward pass from Trinh-Duc unforgivable, but such was France’s dominance at the scrum that a penalty was never far away. Marco Tauleigne broke clear through a thicket of Wales defenders to force Liam Williams into conceding another. With Machenaud off, up stepped Trinh-Duc – and the subsequent miss summed up his day.

Wales were grateful. It has been a mixed Six Nations for them too, ravaged by injuries from the start but noble in defeat in London and Dublin. It would not have taken huge transformations in what actually happened in those two games for that second to read as a first, but they take their place among the forlorn train in Ireland’s wake. It will do, if only for now.