\n<\/p>\n
France recorded a bonus-point win against a spirited Italy in Lille to maintain their bid for a Six Nations Grand Slam and back-to-back titles.<\/b><\/p>\n
Les Bleus raced into a 19-0 lead through tries by Louis Bielle-Biarrey, Emmanuel Meafou and Thomas Ramos, who was a late switch at fly-half after Matthieu Jalibert was ruled out of the game.<\/p>\n
Despite the early dominance on the scoreboard, Italy remained competitive and responded by an Ange Capuozzo try and a Paolo Garbisi penalty.<\/p>\n
With Louis Lynagh in the sin-bin, debutant Gael Drean grabbed the vital bonus-point try and Emilien Gailleton crossed in a less eventful second half.<\/p>\n
The visitors have only beaten France twice in the Six Nations, with the 2024 game ending in a thrilling draw in Lille.<\/p>\n
France, who lost only one game in last year’s championship, next travel to Edinburgh to face Scotland on Saturday, 7 March, while Italy host England on the same day.<\/p>\n
Given Galthie’s side’s strength at home, where they will play England in the final game, the next match could define their Grand Slam hopes.<\/p>\n
“I think we always believed we would get the bonus-point win,” Meafou told ITV.<\/p>\n
“We knew Italy were a strong team, they hung in for 80 minutes, they never cracked and they never let go.<\/p>\n
“Our goal is to take out the Six Nations game by game but the end goal is the 2027 World Cup so we keep working towards that.”<\/p>\n
Back-to-back heavy defeats for Steve Borthwick’s side will also help build Italy’s confidence of recording a first win over England.<\/p>\n
Gonzalo Quesada’s side defeated Scotland in the opening round and ran out of steam to compete in the second half against Les Bleus.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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France recorded a bonus-point win against a spirited Italy in Lille to maintain their bid for a Six Nations Grand Slam and back-to-back titles. Les Bleus raced into a 19-0 lead through tries by Louis Bielle-Biarrey, Emmanuel Meafou and Thomas Ramos, who was a late switch at fly-half after Matthieu Jalibert was ruled out of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rugby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}