The opening thirty minutes of the match were not Wales’s best as a lack of confidence, perhaps instilled after throwing away such a lead in the match against Scotland a month previously, haunted the side. France in comparison scored a try after five minutes, courtesy of Sébastien Bonetti, but also looked somewhat unconvincing. Gerald Merceron easily converted and added a penalty soon after to take his team into a ten point unanswered lead.
Neil Jenkins put Wales on the scoreboard after a quarter of an hour played but Merceron cancelled the score out with one of his own. Jenkins’s boot kept Wales in the game during this early phase, slotting over two further penalties while the boot of Merceron took the scores to 19-9 in favour of the French.
After this Wales stepped up a gear and notched the first out of their four eventual tries of the afternoon. A move initiated by Scott Quinnell, who broke from the back of a scrum, saw the Llanelli captain feed the ball to Rob Howley. Howley ran the length of the field to score the superb breakaway try, to applause from both Welsh and French fans alike.
Wales, now galvanised, entered the dressing room trailing by just 19-16 at half-time and were resurgent on the return to the field. The visitors attained the first score of the half, after failed attempts by Thomas Lombard and Olivier Magne for the home side.
Scott Gibbs and Mark Taylor combined well to send Quinnell underneath the posts for the second Welsh try. Jenkins easily converted and, after a penalty scored by Merceron’s replacement Christophe Lamaison, gained a beautiful drop goal from within his own half to restore the Welsh advantage.
Another try followed for the Men in Red after Stephen Jones, Gibbs’s replacement, fed Quinnell who sent the ball racing to Dafydd James. James made Jenkins’s conversion all the more easy as he placed the oval underneath the posts, the Welsh lead now stretched to eleven points.
France, though, refused to look defeat in the face; a break from Fabian Galthie was aided by Jean-Luc Sadourny, eventually finding Philippe Bernat-Salles who in turn found the Welsh line. The resultant conversion and a penalty for the French reduced Wales’s lead to a solitary point at 33-32, leading into a nail-biting last quarter of the game.
French replacement Sylvain Marconnet made his presence felt as he entered the fray, Wales were penalised for dropping the scrum and Lamaison eased France into a 35-32 advantage.
There was little to separate the teams in the final ten minutes of the game, apart from one factor. Neil Jenkins. The fly half secured a drop goal in the closing minutes to regain the slender one point lead.
Furthermore, the kicking maestro charged down a kick from Bernat-Salles in the dying minutes and raced for the French line. His conversion of his own try signalled the close of the scoring, the end of the scintillating match and the return of the ability of Welsh fans to breath easy once more.
