In the 76th minute of the match between France and Namibia on Thursday, September 21, French kicker Thomas Ramos stepped up at Marseille's Stade-Vélodrome to convert the try his teammate Melvyn Jaminet had just scored. Les Bleus were 87 points ahead, and his kicking was not going to affect the result in any way. (final score won 96-0) So this conversion, slightly to the right of the posts, could have been a mere detail.
And yet, the Stade Toulousain striker's effort to get the ball between the posts was enough to put this Rugby World Cup group match in the annals of the French national team. By taking the score to 89 points, France broke its record for the most points scored in an international match. The previous record dated back to 2007 when the French beat Namibia 87-10 in a World Cup match. A few minutes earlier, the largest gap between the French team and an opponent, also dating back to that 2007 match, had also been surpassed.
Admittedly, the Namibian opposition on the night was weak, reshuffled and even outnumbered after their captain Johan Deysel was sent off early in the second half, after a head-to-head clash with his counterpart Antoine Dupont. The nature of the latter's injury is still unknown, with coach Fabien Galthié telling the press just after the match that he suspected "a crack or fracture in the jawbone." The captain, scrum-half and undisputed leader of the French team was taken to hospital in the evening for tests.
This injury − and the uncertainty it casts over Les Bleus' future − is the only shadow on an almost perfect picture: France scored 14 tries and demonstrated their dazzling attacking ability, resulting in an unprecedented final score. And unlike their previous match against Uruguay, Les Bleus were awarded the offensive bonus (an extra point for scoring four tries) in the 21st minute. Never before had a French team won the bonus so quickly.
"We couldn't have hoped for better. Very few teams can put 96 points on an opponent who's playing for their life. But we mustn't get carried away and keep working," said French center Gaël Fickou after the match.
Did Les Bleus have this record in the back of their minds, if only to send a message to the competition? "It wasn't an objective. We just wanted to play a complete game," said Ramos, one of the key players in the game, "That's what we said at half-time, that we had to keep going for the full 80 minutes. But it's also good to make history." Galthié, meanwhile, had consulted his archives and placed his players' performance in a shorter timeframe. "It was a special match. I'd noted the record scores we've achieved over the last four years, and our record was 53-10 at Twickenham [against England in the last Six Nations Championship]," said the coach after the match.
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