The Fijian fear, the “fast rugby” against Australia and the lack of juice against the Blacks in the final (defeating the Blues 29-9)… Center Philippe Sela (61 years old, 111 points) revisits the first World Cup in 1987, which was held in New Zealand.
How did you approach this first edition?
Feeling like pioneers because we knew nothing about the World Cup. We had a very long preparation in Oche and the Pyrenees and had a lot of meetings to improve the relationship in the team. It was fun and we told ourselves we were becoming professionals. There were very high demands from the staff and from our coach Jacques Foreau, who we really liked.
Very close to the players, festive, and also tangible, bringing the human side as well as its demands. This World Cup is full of so many revelations: it’s so far away that we’re completely, 100% immersed in this bubble. There wasn’t all the technology of today. We called the family, it cost us a lot.
You just won a Grand Slam, did you feel like an outsider?
We are one of the teams that have the potential to win it. We played the All Blacks the year before, losing once and winning once, so it was possible. But it wasn’t just the All Blacks. In the group we face Scotland, which was not successful for us. We’ve never won at Murrayfield (He did not achieve any victory between 1978 and 1994). We tied the score (20-20) by scoring one more try than the Scots, allowing us to take first place.
In the quarter you meet the Fijians. Fear creeping in?
Yes. We don’t know them much, and there’s no video. We know they play in an unusual way compared to European rugby, and we are surprised. Fortunately we had two tremendous strikers on the day, with Laurent Rodriguez scoring two tries. In the back, Frank Misnell said we pushed like saloon doors and he was right.
We had a hard time organizing ourselves against players who came from everywhere and who had been around longer than us. We made some shots, it was a bit of an ordeal. I remember this number 10, Severo Koro Dwadua, who was huge and would let the ball escape when he was about to score. This changes everything because, in this procedure, if they come back, we may have very great difficulty. We managed to win (31-16) and behind that, we had a much harder week of training than the match, which Jacques Fourox did not like! Rightly so. High intensity exercises as they say today (He laughs).
Did that help you against the Aussies at home in the first half?
We knew it would be very difficult, and we were not favourites. It was a semi-final, but it was our final in a way. It was a bit of a ‘rugby’-like match, with moves not always controlled, and an exciting and entertaining semi-final, which I consider to be a bit timeless with different rules to today.
It’s the same scenario that happened in 1999. At the end of the match, we found ourselves on the pitch with fans and former French players who came to see us and sang Basque songs with Pascal Ondertz, and Pyrenees songs with Louis Armari and the team. “Garosh” (Jean-Pierre Garouet). It was a wonderful moment.
And in the final, you’re running out of fuel against New Zealand…
We were missing some juice. About 50H One minute I feel we are burned and a little beaten (29-9). This result is the lack of enthusiasm because of the last games, during which we ran like crazy against Fiji for no reason, somewhere, and this game against Australia which we had to go on because the final scheduled match, the All Blacks were against the Wallabies. .
We came to disrupt that but we spent so much energy that we paid for it in the final. They were more active than us, and won the semi-final without trying too hard (49-6 vs Wales). There was also Jacques Fouro’s speech before the final, in midfield. He told us about our families. It was a moment that I would not change. My jaw was shaking. I would do this the day before dinner so we could work out the emotional side during the night.
