France coach Fabien Galthie declared himself satisfied with Friday’s 60-7 drubbing of Italy to move into the knockout stages as Pool A winners but said the next test on their World Cup journey would be as hard as they come.
The eight-try win over Italy was as comfortable as Galthie could have expected with a fast start taking his team to a 24-0 lead inside 22 minutes, effectively erasing the possibility of an Italian upset at OL Stadium.
It concluded a strong pool phase for the tournament hosts, which started with victory over the All Blacks, stalled a little in a hard-fought win over Uruguay before the thrashings of Namibia and now Italy.
Next up is likely to be a meeting with the defending champion Springboks, although top-ranked Ireland or Scotland remain possible opponents depending on the result of their meeting in Paris on Saturday.
“This evening we will celebrate this victory and then we will turn our thoughts to the quarter-finals,” Galthie told reporters.
“After a first ‘World Cup final’ against New Zealand, our match next weekend will be a second ‘World Cup final’, clearly. Whoever, the opponent is, it is clearly another ‘World Cup final’.”
Galthie said he was happy with how his team’s defence was progressing, thought the fast start was extremely satisfying and was very happy with the way his forwards set a platform for “permanent pressure” on the Italians.
Time and again, however, he returned to the magnitude of next Sunday’s quarter-final at Stade de France.
“South Africa are world champions and have clearly been preparing to win back-to-back titles and on the other side is the number one team in the world,” he said.
“The draw is what it is, and it’s up to us to do our job.”
Galthie made scant reference to injured scrumhalf Antoine Dupont, who fractured his eye socket in the Namibia win, saying only that every injured player in his squad was there because he expected them to be available again.
There were few words of praise for individuals, even winger Damian Penaud who scored the 34th and 35th five-pointers of his career to move into second place on the list of most prolific French try-scorers behind the great Serge Blanco (38).
“The winger is the last link in a chain. It’s easy to congratulate Damian but the great players are always served by their teams,” the former scrumhalf said.
“In the last four years, we’ve had a lot of players improving but it’s always on the back of the team.”