Scotland fall to France and Gaël Fickou in 14-a-side Six Nations battle

Another breathless, brilliant encounter to ridicule the idea that rugby was somehow better in the old days. France won with a bonus point, Gaël Fickou’s last-minute try earning them the garnish and denying Scotland even the consolation of a point of their own. How they would have been worth it, or indeed the full five, had they come their way.

Not that the full five do anything to change France’s place in the table. They stay in fourth, but now there are three teams on 10 points, five behind Ireland with maximum points at the top of the table. The French, having lost to Ireland already, now look to Scotland themselves and England, whom France play in the next round, to try to stop an Irish march to the title.

What a prospect Scotland’s next match – at home to Ireland – would have been, had they managed to ride the red card shown to Grant Gilchrist in seventh minute and a 19-0 deficit at the end of the first quarter to complete the comeback. As it is, they pulled the score back to 25-21 with 12 minutes to go, France by then also down to 14, after the red card shown to Mohamed Haouas, who had seen red against Scotland three years ago, in the 12th minute.

That rendered most of the match a 14-a-side contest – and it turns out they are pretty good, if the doomsayers do want to meddle further with the modern game. France had reacted to their first defeat in so long last time out in Dublin with a ferocious assault on the Scottish defence, which yielded a try for Romain Ntamack in the fifth minute, just before Gilchrist’s red. Just after it, a lightning counter was finished by Ethan Dumortier to set France 12-0 up.

A long afternoon looked in prospect for the Scots then, but Haouas’s red a few minutes later evened the ledger. All