All Black Sonny Bill Williams is red-carded by referee Jerome Garces. Photo/Photosport
All Black Sonny Bill Williams is red-carded by referee Jerome Garces. Photo/Photosport
By Grant Chapman
Zut alors! Everywhere we turn these days, there's a Frenchman ready to take a swing at us.
What have we ever done to these guys, except perhaps protest against their nuclear explosions? We'll come back to that later.
We're probably one of the few countries in the world that has never invaded them. In fact, we rushed to their defence twice last century, when their rowdy neighbours started acting up.
But in the space of just a few days, our "bons amis" have turned a tad hostile towards us on the sporting field.
Not sure why we thought we should get those parts at discount rate, after Team France had probably paid through the nose for them in the first place, but I guess we're a little country punching above our weight and we feel entitled.
There should have been alarm bells ringing, after a third "conspirateur" frustrated a clearly dominant Crusaders scrum early in the tour. Obviously, something was being lost in translation.
If we had any doubts something fishy was about to go down, they should have been dispelled when Romain Poite conveniently overlooked the tackle that dumped Jordie Barrett on his head during the Hurricanes hit-out.
TMO George Ayoub virtually had to reach down his walkie talkie, grab Poite by the ear and make him watch the incriminating replay. It was like Chicago Tower trying to talk Ted Striker down in the movie "Airplane!" ... hilarious, if it wasn't so scary.
You millennials won't get that reference.
Sure enough, Jerome Garces conveniently tuned Ayoub out, as he gifted the Lions victory in the second test, reducing (rightfully, as it turned out) the home team to just 14 players and then, when that didn't work, mystifying many with an interpretation of law that produced the game-clinching penalty.
Re-enter Poite for the series decider. With the misfiring All Blacks, again, unable to take the referee out of the equation, he bemused with many of his calls, even before his "accidental off-side" bombshell.
Awarding an off-side penalty when a halfback deliberately passes the ball into an opponent lying motionless on the ground is just wrong ... it's like rewarding flopping in soccer.
Then came the "Oui, Jerome" conversation between Poite and Garces, followed by the "let's make a deal" offer that changed history forever (or at least the next 12 years).
Not only is Bauer named after a real-life TV action hero (or maybe vice versa), he is the designated bouncer on a Quick-Step Floors team assigned to keep reigning speedster Marcel Kittel out of trouble throughout the three-week journey. Does that sound like someone you want to mess with?
Underpinning all this recent angst is that sweaty-palm trepidation that grips the nation every four years, whenever France pops up on our side of the Rugby World Cup draw.
Maybe this is just payback for the Rainbow Warrior affair (told you we'd come back to this) and the international embarrassment inflicted on France by then-prime minister David Lange at the United Nations.
The tragic 1985 sinking of the Greenpeace protest boat is an injustice that somehow just keeps on giving well past its use-by date. A few years ago, at a Heineken Open press conference, one Kiwi journalist decided it was a good idea to grill an unsuspecting French tennis player about his knowledge of the conspiracy.
Considering that player was not even born when it happened, the interrogation seemed in particularly poor taste - that was an interview that could not end soon enough.
Surely, we can all just get along.
Laisser passer les autries ... let bygones be bygones!
