France have been hit by a blow after lock Yoann Maestri was ruled out of their game against Australia in Paris on Saturday due to a back injury.
Maestri is replaced in the line-up by Jocelino Suta while Perpignan's Sébastien Vahaamahina has been called onto the French bench for the game.
France (revised): 15 Brice Dulin, 14 Wesley Fofana, 13 Florian Fritz , 12 Maxime Mermoz, 11 Vincent Clerc, 10 Frederic Michalak, 9 Maxime Machenaud, 8 Louis Picamoles, 7 Fulgence Ouedraogo, 6 Yannick Nyanga, 5 Jocelino Suta, 4 Pascal Papé (c), 3 Nicolas Mas, 2 Dimitri Szarzewski, 1 Yannick Forestier.
Replacements: 16 Benjamin Kayser, 17 Thomas Domingo, 18 Vincent Debaty, 19 Sébastien Vahaamahina, 20 Damien Chouly, 21 Morgan Parra, 22 Francois Trinh-Duc, 23 Yoann Huget.
Comments
Toulousain says...
This is not how the french camp are presenting it. Maestri was spared training on thursday to recover. He is not injured. Just knackered.
My foolish club has asked this 24 year old boy to play 12 games already this season, nearly all as a starter, and he never gets subbed after 60 minutes. That's after giving him 4 weeks off in the summer. Now Noves is rather pleased with himself because Yoann can finally have a rest during the test window when other T14 clubs are also short of players, so he won't be missed as much. (Same goes for Albacete by the way)
Another example, if we needed one, of club before country. Does no-one else see what's going on? Or maybe no-one else really cares, because it's in their interests to see a weakened French national team....
I guess we'll hear the uproar when Lions players are delivered injured at the end of the season. Or when Jamie Roberts can't play in the 6N anymore due to club commitments....
Posted 10:37 09th November 2012