A week after letting the Black Ferns get away, France won a match they should have lost ten times over.

Two reds in six minutes, and 0-19 on the scoreboard

The match turned before the quarter-hour mark, and it turned twice in the same direction. Ambre Mwayembe was sent off on 16 minutes, at the very moment Brittany Merlo scored Australia’s first try, converted by Samantha Wood, so France lost a player and seven points in the same passage of play. Five minutes later, Léa Champon and then Léa Murie were sin-binned in quick succession, and Cloé Correa was sent off on 22 minutes: in six minutes, France had been reduced to eleven players against fifteen.

Australia only had to help themselves, and they did so without delay. Tania Naden scored on 23 minutes, Caitlyn Halse on 27, and Wood converted the second to make it 0-19. At that point France were nineteen points down with four fewer players on the pitch, and fifty minutes still to play.

Twelve points before the break, with thirteen players

That is where the game stopped following its own logic. Once the yellow cards had been served, France played thirteen against fifteen without giving an inch: Anaïs Grando scored on 36 minutes, Émilie Boulard on 40, and Carla Arbez’s conversion brought France back to 12-19 as the teams went in at half-time. Seven points down, two players short, and a team that had just conceded nineteen in a row.

Australia did try to shut the door straight after the restart, with Piper Duck’s try converted by Wood on 48 minutes, which restored a fourteen-point lead. But Pauline Bourdon Sansus replied six minutes later, and the match picked up where it had left off.

Riffonneau then Feleu, and Australia fall behind on 73 minutes

The replacements finished the job, which in hindsight makes sense of the bench picked by François Ratier. Elisa Riffonneau scored on 67 minutes, Lina Queyroi converted, and the gap was down to two points. Six minutes later, Téani Feleu finished a move and gave France, for the first time since kick-off, a lead they would not give up.

The final count shows what this win was made of: five French tries to four Australian, but only two conversions from five on one side against three from four on the other. France won 29-26 by scoring more often, not by kicking better, and after playing most of the match with thirteen.

A fifteen-minute stoppage for a burning vehicle

On top of all that came a fifteen-minute stoppage, caused by a vehicle that caught fire in the car park of the Stade Maurice-David, which cut the match in two before the players returned.

And this was a side hit by absences. Manae Feleu, Madoussou Fall Raclot and Kiara Zago were missing, 96 caps between them, three starters had left for sevens, and three players won their first cap off the bench: Maïlys Mailagi, Mouna Touré and Élodie Fernandez. A week after fading in the final quarter of an hour against New Zealand, France did exactly the opposite, and they face Canada on 26 September before heading to New Zealand in October. The disciplinary committee, for its part, will look at the two red cards before then.