Fabien Galthié after the historic success of the Blues in England: “A perfect day”

” How do you feel after such a victory ?
There is a lot of joy, pleasure and emotions… It’s moving when you know this place (Twickenham)this legendary stadium, the difficulty of winning.

Is this the most successful match of your term?
It’s hard to judge over 34 matches. But in any case we had decided to release THE match today (SATURDAY). For lots of reasons. We had to get a big game out and we did. The tactical choices we made for this match, it’s a great pleasure to see that it works and that we manage to take the match and put them in great difficulty. We took the right options, sometimes very simple, but which change the face of the game by giving us a lot of confidence and making the opponent lose it. The rain could have disturbed us, but there too the players managed to adapt. We sometimes got back to the score, the English did it too in November against the All Blacks (25-25). There was this threat but we managed to keep control of the game. It’s perfect, a perfect day. At Twickenham, it’s rare, very rare. Personally, I had never experienced it.

Did you need such a match six months before the World Cup?
We are in the competition for the moment, in this Tournament. We haven’t dropped the trophy yet. Tomorrow (Sunday), we will see what will happen during Scotland-Ireland. We are going to savor this evening and repeat to ourselves that we have not given up on the competition. We stumbled in Ireland, we learned a lot and now we will see what happens tomorrow in Scotland. We have a very important match in Paris on Saturday (against Wales) and then we will have the World Cup in our sights. We’ve been preparing for it for four years. Everything we experience, positively or negatively, serves to prepare us for this moment.

“When you play rugby and you play at Twickenham, you validate everything you have done in this sport since everything was small”

Does this performance also correspond to a rise in physical power?
It’s just. We climb physically, collectively. We are better from match to match and we feel a rise in power, that’s for sure. At all levels, and not only physically.

You also adjusted things in the ground game…
We have made progress on that. When the refereeing changes, we can try to improve and that’s what we did in the four matches. It’s great to have this progression.

In your wildest dreams, could you have imagined that one day?
No never. But when you come to Twickenham, you don’t dream. I have known everything here, I love coming here. That’s what I said to the players before the game: when you play rugby and you play at Twickenham, you validate everything you do in this sport since everything is small. When you come there, it’s mythical. This stadium rewards bravery, the teams who deliver collectively and today we were brave, committed, determined, conquerors and we knew why we were there. »