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The Worst – And Longest – Match Of My Life . . . Luke Charteris On The 2011 Defeat To France

Luke Charteris doesn’t want his former teammates to go through the same post-match agonies he suffered the last time Wales met France at the World Cup.

The towering Bath lock – now on the coaching staff at the English club – played the full 80 minutes in the 9-8 defeat in the 2011 semi-final, when Wales lost skipper Sam Warburton to a red card after a mere 12 minutes.

That defeat remains the biggest disappointment and regret in Charteris’ long career and it still hurts even to this day.

“It was undoubtedly one of the toughest defeats of my career. It was in stark contrast to the week before when we beat Ireland,” says Charteris.

“That had been one of the best feelings I’d had, but at the final whistle against the French I just remember just hitting the floor and feeling knackered. At the full-time whistle, Aurelien Rougerie came over to me and picked me up off the ground.

“The Welsh players just walked around the stadium with a mixture of exhaustion and disappointment. It was brutal and we then had to get changed quickly to go off to the post-match function.

“I was rooming with Jamie Roberts and we tried to console each other. It was tough.”

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To avoid that same feeling Charteris believes Justin Tipuric will have to win the back row battle with Wenceslas Lauret.

“Lauret is a quality player and he will be a really important line-out operator for the French. They’ve got some massive lumps in the second-row and some good ball winning options in the back-row,” he said.

“Whoever wins the battle between Justin Tipuric and Wenceslas Lauret will go a long way to deciding which team comes out on top. I think our fitness will be a key factor.

“But there are so many quality individual players in this France team. They are going to have a purple patch and Wales’ big challenge will be to restrict their points.

“When France are in a purple patch we need to restrict them to no more than 10 points. The problem will come if they have a purple patch and they score two or three tries, because then it will be very hard to catch up.

“A lot of sides have recently enjoyed a purple patch against Wales, but we’ve managed to swing the momentum back quickly enough because of our fitness. But we can’t allow France to get back-to-back scores.

“When they do that their confidence soars and we’ll find ourselves in big trouble. It’s the best French team for a few years.

“They lost their way a bit, but now they’ve got a lot of good young quality players that will pose a huge threat. I think Wales are full of confidence and they understand how to beat France, but it will be a very tough game.

“Wales will have to play the best they have so far at the World Cup to win, but we know how to beat them. Having a clean bill of health is massive and it means we can pick from strength.”

Charteris had current Wales skipper Alun Wyn Jones packing down with him in Auckland eight years ago and is delighted to see his old boiler-house mate taking another record this weekend.

Having surpassed Gethin Jenkins’ Welsh cap record in Japan, he will also overtake him as Wales’ most capped player at the World Cup with his 19th appearance.

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“Alun Wyn is definitely one of the most influential players in the world. He’s head and shoulders above everyone else on the experience front in the Welsh team,” added Charteris.

“He always puts in a top-class performance and he keeps on getting better and better. He’s got quite a young team around him and he will lead them around the field.”

At least if Wales keep 15 men on the pitch, then the players should not quite feel as Charteris did eight years ago – that he was involved in the longest 80 minutes of his life.

“I didn’t realise the sending off was so early in the game. I remember the second-half felt like the longest game I’ve ever played in.

“It just kept on going and the fact that we were a man down meant we had to put in some extra work. I just remember some of the defensive sets were really tough.

“I remember thinking we just couldn’t get into their 22 for one attack. When we got down there Mike Phillips scored but it seemed to go on and on.

“We tried desperately to get into their 22 to get a shot at a drop goal or a penalty. We had a chance five minutes from time with a missed penalty and after that it was just a blur.

“We were confident in our fitness and we did a huge amount of work on that in our pre-season training camps.

“We will always back our fitness anyway. We thought we were fit enough to cover Sam’s loss and I think we did that but we just didn’t have enough of a cutting edge that we needed.”

 

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