By Brendan Gallagher
They might still frustrate and annoy us to distraction but try to imagine a Six Nations Championship without France. C'est impossible!
The championship, indeed the rugby world, changed forever exactly 100 years ago when the four home unions reluctantly invited our neighbours across the water to join the fun.
The Six Nations championship has become our one rock-solid annual point of contact with France for most of the past 100 years and goes way beyond the sporting arena. Four times every winter England and the three Celtic nations take on the French and for many supporters the biennial trip to Paris provided not only our first encounter with the French but our first trip abroad of any sort.
Blaring police sirens, noisy hotel plumbing, taxi fares only Bill Gates could afford with equanimity, and stroppy waiters on ego trips – but equally a country in love with rugby and full of rugby people. You are among friends and do not need to have a French O-level to read and understand the endless rugby pages of L'Equipe on international weekend.
"Paris was always absolutely the best weekend in rugby, I trust that is still the case" says Jason Leonard – and he should know, having won a record 114 caps for England. "The matches were usually epic and the night out afterwards not far behind.
"In my book France don't get enough credit for being great hosts, they are true to rugby's spirit, we all saw that in the 2007 World Cup."
In truth, championship rugby has brought a mass cross-fertilisation and appreciation of France that has eluded generations of politicians and francophiles. We have even added to their vocabulary. Before taking to rugby there was no word in the French language for fair play, such nonsense was an alien concept, but slowly we have turned our gallic friends. Le fair-play now appears in all their dictionaries and they even practise it occasionally.
France were slow starters and after joining in 1910 did not claim a share of the championship until 1954. Mind you that period not only included World War Two but also the small matter of being expelled in 1932 after allegations – all of them true – of professionalism and excessive violence in their domestic game in which there had been fatalities due to foul play.
They returned after the War and since 1954 have been making up for lost time with 16 outright championship wins, including eight Grand Slams, and another seven shared championships. France have been the most consistent team of the last 50 years, always strong and in the mix.
But always so wonderfully Jekyll and Hyde. France can light a fuse and explode into joyous action like no other team, most famously when Philippe Saint-Andre scored Twickenham's "Try of the century" in 1991 after Pierre Berbizier and Serge Blanco started trotting speculatively behind their own line before hitting the turbo.
In terms of a team performance, look no further than their 51-0 demolition of Wales at Wembley in 1998 when Thomas Castaignède enjoyed his day of days and no team on earth would have got within 30 points of them.
But there is a dark side that still shocks a hundred years on: the willingness to resort habitually to eye-gouging, butting and biting.
In the French psyche rugby still sits alongside bullfighting, such a popular sport in so many parts of the rugby-playing south west of the country.
As with bullfighting there can be grace, panache and even chivalry, but also wanton cruelty and violence. Beauty and the beast. It was Jean-Pierre Rives, the fairest of players incidentally, who tried once to explain it. "In France we treat all wars like games but we treat games like war."
Despite all their wonderful runners – Boniface, Pratt, Maso, Blanco, Lagisquet, Charvet, Ntamack, Castaignède etc – France has also spawned probably the meanest pack in championship history. Has there ever been a more villainous looking front five than their Grand Slam-winning team of 1977: Robert Paparemborde, Alain Paco, Gerard Cholley, Jean-Francois Imbernon and Michel Palmie? Absolutely terrifying. And had there ever been a better French back row than Rives, Jean-Claude Skrela and Jean-Pierre Bastiat who fed off their domination?
"The French are tough and volatile but the language barrier explained a lot of the violence," says Leonard. "It was plain unfair on them to be confronted every match by English-speaking refs from the home countries who had no command of French. Rugby is a complicated enough game without that. They felt outsiders and you could see them getting more and more frustrated until there came a tipping point and off they went. It's much better now, thanks to the Heineken Cup and refs learning French, although they still have their moments.
"France have been brilliant for rugby and the championship. When Philippe Saint-Andre scored that try at Twickenham I just wanted to stand back and applaud like everybody else. I was a young bloke then; later in my career I would have done exactly that, Grand Slam decider or not. It was magnificent."
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