6 November 2007

France sank against Argentina tonight. Last time France played in Parc des Princes, they were crushed by South-Africa, 10 years ago. The same happened tonight with an impressive victory by Argentina against France. France dominated the first 20 minutes but Argentina's defense was heroic and strong. Certainly the best defense play of this entire world cup, in this match, with a great organization around mauls, an impressive scrum and explosive tackles. After being dominated 26 minutes long and anyway scoring a try an, Argentina had to resist 10 minutes before half time when France unsuccessfully attempted to score a try (which would probably have changed the match). I think I will have to review these 10 minutes again as this was a demonstration of defensive play. It is indeed not a surprise that Ibanez lost his nerves and got expelled at the very end of 1st half time. Sad end of career...very similar to Zidane's one, indeed. In second half time, seeing France being crushed so hard was sometimes saddening but Argentina played so wonderfully that we could just be admirative of that play. Again, their solidarity and defensive play made the difference and, 5 tries later, they finally logically beat France. The Argentinian team is really a great satisfaction of the world cup. Playing only with 18 players, they only half-missed one match: their semi-final against South-Africa. I think they now really deserve to play in the Tri-Nations tournament along with New Zealand, Australia and South-Africa: if that doesn't happen, I will really think that other southern hemisphere nations are just cowards..:-) What about France? Well, this is a really sad ending for that world cup. Finishing with two very bad matches is really worrying for the future of that team. There are many promising players in that team (such as Dusautoir, Szarzewski...) and they can probably rebuild something and we still be enthusiast about that sport in this country.

If you hadn't the occasion to see RSA-TON, just look around for it, find if it is broadcasted at a later time and watch it. The Tonga team just had 10 minutes of weakness, with South-Africa scoring three tries. But they never gave up, scored two tries and finally ended up 25-30, winning the defensive bonus point and really worrying South-Africa. For sure, the repeated failures of RSA on penalties also helped for this scenario, but Tonga became the stars of this pool and Finau Maka is the star of Tonga..:-) The Bollaert stadium in Lens is more used to the fights of the local soccer team than high level rugby but they supported the Tonga team the very same way they support the "Sang et Or". I think that the Tonga players will remember that one. England can *really* worry.

So, Ubuntu Gutsy is out. That's great for Ubuntu users, I guess. I indeed just wonder why the official announcement does not even contain the word "Debian". I never played the common "Ubuntu bashing" game that's pretty popular among DD and Debian users, but I probably would have appreciated something reminding the link between Debian and Ubuntu. This is probably not new and I guess that reading the former announcements would lead to the same feeling....this is just the first time I notice this. Isn't Ubuntu still based on Debian? From the activity about the few packages I maintain, I was still thinking this.

...but, really, Fiji would have deserved the victory. They did put the Stade Velodrome on fire this afternoon, pushing South-Africa to play....a quite bad rugby with few imagination and many errors. In the RSA team, only Steyn emerged and saved his team from sinking (37-20). RSA scored 5 tries mostly only because they have good four-wheel-driven "trucks". In the Fiji side, Sisa Koyamaibole and Mosese Rauluni lead their team to even the score 20-20 on 65th minute...unfortunately, losing in the last 10 minutes despite the support of the entire French crowd. The Springboks need to improve their play dramatically if they want to have a chance against Argentina (very probably unless Scotland realises a miracle). My conclusion today: the Three Nations from southern hemisphere (RSA, NZL, AUS) should really consider opening their annual tournament to other nations such as Samoa, Tonga, Fiji or Argentina. That would certainly force them to play another game than their usual game. Of course, that would mean being less attractive to players (just count the number of players from Samoa, Tonga and Fiji who play with New Zealand and Australia) but considerably widening rugby in the Pacific area.

...at least, in my opinion (which is obviously biased, let's admit that). There are several reasons for this loss:

• Strategic choices: Bernard Laporte deliberately chose to use the same tactic against England and New Zealand. However, the tactic that worked against New Zealand failed against England, mostly because that tactic...is just the play of the English team. So, as we say in French, "les Bleus" entered the game of England and therefore made the task easier for them.
• The choice of players. This is the result of the previous item. Reconducting the entire team that won against NZ was IMHO a bad idea. It is not a scoop that I dislike Rapha l Ibanez or Fabien Pelous and I would rather have seen the punch of Dimitri Szarzewski or, for once, S bastien Chabal beginning the game (actually, he entered pretty quickly because of Pelous' injury).
• Several failures to occupy the English side with kick play. In many occasions, kick shots by either Beauxis, Traille or Jauzion missed their target. This is IMHO the main reason for the defeat.
• Too many drop tentatives. When they were in the English side, why the hell did they choose to kick drops several times instead of just play. That sounds like a fear of not scoring and the French lost several key balls with that miserable tactic.
• Too many lost balls in mauls. That is not only a failure by the French but also good defense play by the English team.
• Discipline. It happened only once (high tackle by Dimitri Szarzewski) but that was *the* moment where no error was possible and it offered an ideal penalty kick to Wilkinson.
• Bad luck. We can't rule out that one. The difference is 5 points: this stupid 1st minute try....and the missing 50 centimeters on Chabal's action in the last minutes.

Some *bad* reasons for the English victory:

• Johnny Wilkinson influence: this is untrue. Apart from his drop goal, he missed penalty kick tentatives and his kick play was not brilliant during the same. I much preferred Andy Gomarsall during that game.
• Scrums. They didn't crush the French scrum which is one of the satisfactions of that game. The English team even had to cheat slightly during 1st half time to win their scrums.
• Good play. No. Watching the game again, there was as many bad choices in the English side than in French side. I can only enhance their defense, not their attack. So, as I wrote immediately after the game, that one was one of the worst matches in the entire WC.
• The referee. Before the game, some French newspapers were doubting of Mr. Kaplan because he's South-African (funnily, some English newspapers were also doubting because he was supposed to advantage England's opponents in the past). He was indeed perfect. Anyway, everybody knows I never blame referees in sports.

MJ, each French NPO is free to establish its own regulation rules, which may include a differential voting system if they want to. That should of course respect the French law (for instance, no discrimination based on sex, religion or any other genetic factor) but, as far as I know, nothing prevents deciding that "personnes morales" (ie non physical people) have a higher or lower vote than others. However, this is certainly not common, but many NPO simply don't have non physical members anyway (some don't authorize non physical people to be members). For those who care, Debian France (which is a NPO, but not regulated by 1901 law, but by the special NPO law for Alsace and Lorraine, inherited from the 1810-1918 years) admits physical and "moral" members with an equal voting right. The only special case is a rule that allows Debian developers to have a veto right on any decision of the organisation. See that official regulation rules of Debian France for details (French only). PS: Debian France is currently inactive, due to a longstanding dispute with the French Tax collecting organisation (Direction des Imp ts) who initially refused to consider us as a non profit organisation...because "we sell an operating system" (doh!).

So, A completely non-existing French team lost against a....nearly completely non-existing English team. Too many bad decisions, too much bad kick play, too many lost balls....and even no luck (the English try...damn). The French team couldn't win with such poor play (even when they were leading by 9-8, we both were completely sure they would lose on a penalty kick). What's pretty sad is that England nearly showed nothing too and, therefore, both teams made this the worst match I've seen in that world cup. Hopefully, Argentina and South Africa will show some better play tomorrow. However, when I see this, I nearly regret that France eliminated New Zealand. The All Blacks could never have played as bad as France did and they would certainly have kicked out that boring English team. Definitely, I'll be South African or Argentinian next Sunday (I have a small preference for being Argentinian, indeed).

About two weeks ago, I was claiming that my pet package is awfully clean!. It turned out to be slightly untrue as there was a pending Ubuntu patch. Despite what I claimed then, I finally integrated it without checking whether they now mention Debian in their release annoucements. Yesterday, the package migrated to testing. So, now, my pet package really has the cleanest packages.qa.debian.org page possible.

We watched either parts or the entire three matches yesterday. So, long report..:-) The day began with the most unbalanced game of this world cup, featuring New Zealand, world's top rugby team, against Portugal, ranked 22nd. Rugby in Portugal is played by about 4200 people only, in less than 50 clubs. All players are amateur but one (Gon alvo Uva, playing in Montpellier, France), being dentists, students, etc...and coming to RWC during their holidays. The result (108-13 and 16 tries) was expected but the feeling when Portugal scored a try was great, with the 40,000 attendees in Lyon supporting Portugal. Personnally, I had great time chatting on IRC with Miguel Figueiredo, one of the leaders of the portuguese l10n team in Debian, during the match. We watched Wales-Australia (20-32) during the evening. That game was obviously the key match of this pool, with the winner very probably finishing 1st in the pool. Wales playing in Millenium Stadium in Cardiff is always astonishing and show how much the Welsh people love this sport. During 1st half, Australia strongly dominated and logically lead 25-3 with 3 tries. Berrick Barnes, their new fly half (Stephen Larkham injured), is a very promising player and, imho, the match's MVP (even after being severely bashed by Gareth Thomas on Australia's first try). After half time, the Welsh team courageously fought and came back to 13-25, menacing Australia which was more hesitating. Unfortunately, Australia scored a try after a big mistake by Stephen Jones. So, even with good play by Wales and another try by the incredible wing player Shane Williams, Australia logically won this game. Again, a southern hemisphere team dominated a northern hemisphere one. This is probably what will happen during this entire WC and I bet that New Zealand, Australia and South Africa will end up in semi-finals, quite probably along with Argentina, unless France does a miracle and ends up 1st in their pool. I think that Australia is slightly weaker than NZ and RSA, though. So, my current bet is NZ-RSA for the final (this can happen, given their respective track to the final and given that they certainly will end up first of their respective pools). Finally, we watched the second half of Ireland-Georgia (14-10). *That* was quite a surprise. Ireland was very close to lose this game with Georgian forwards crushing them repeatedly at the end of the match and nearly scoring a try that would have made them win. Everybody was waiting for Georgia to swell after their strong 1st half (3-7) but they managed to fight until the last second, supported by Bordeaux 40,000 attendees (minus a few thousands of Irish supporters, of course). So, while the initial question was whether Ireland would score a bonus point, the final question became about them to *win* the match. This gives even more credit to Argentina's victory last Tuesday. Full standing ovation for Georgia at the end of the match. Today is again a busy day. I'll probably skip Fidji-Canada (which happens at the same time than France-Namibia) but certainly won't miss Samoa-Tonga and, of course, France-Namibia. Samoa have to win to keep their chances of qualifying (they can beat England, really) and, well, France has of course to win *and* score a bonus point. In this world cup where to so-called "small" teams are not that small, everything can happen and France is anything but safe, ehre.

Thursday featured Wales-Japan which we briefly watched. Easy win for the Welsh who begin to secure down their qualification for the 1/4th finals. They'll just need a victory over Fidji on Sept 29th to do so (but Fidji would qualify by winning so that match will be one of those to watch during last round). Nothing really interesting to say about WAL-JPN (72-10). The difference in the front lines was too obvious for Japan to get any chance to win. However, at least during the first half of the first half-time, the were even leading after scoring one of the best tries as of now in the tournament. Yesterday was a key day for the French team. Victory against Ireland was mandatory. They made it (25-3, two tries) which is by far the most important. That wasn't definitely an easy match but noone was hoping it to be one. The french game is still far from being perfect (sometimes strange kick play and weird decisions by the rear players, sometimes slow assistance to players in rucks and sometimes stupid fouls giving their opponents opportunities to kick penalties (or expelled players as Traille was at the end of the game). On the other hand, some parts of the game were good quality: scrums (two balls won), line-outs (4 or 5 balls won on opponents' throw: great Julien Bonnaire there) and the magic inspiration of Elissalde and Michalak on the two tries as well as Clerc scoring these tries. There is still room for progress for the French, definitely (the same play against New Zealand, Australia or South Africa would be a loss). They're however on a good way. Next step is winning over Georgia, hopefully scoring a bonus point (that may be harder than expected as Georgia showed good defense) and hope that the Irish team will win over Argentina. Again, this week-end will be busy:

• Saturday:
  • South-Africa-Tonga: both teams won their first two matches. Tonga is hoping to qualify, still, so while they probably can't beat RSA, they can hope scoring the defensive bonus point.
  • England-Samoa: England has to win to keep their chances to qualify. This is Johnny Wilkinson's come back and they should do it. We can expect good support by the French audience for the Samoans and very interesting match to watch
  • Argentina-Namibia: I already explained why I think that Argentina is really able to reach the semi-finals. This should be a quite easy match for them with one goal: score the offensive bonus point to secure down their 1st rank
• Sunday:
  • Australia-Fidji: Fidji didn't show a very strong play as of now against Japan and Canada, so I think that Australia will have a quite easy win
  • Scotland-New Zealand: I really fear for the Scots that they are crushed by the All Blacks and they will probably more think about the upcoming match against Italy and probably don't hope that much for this one.

An interesting story that give some idea of what makes rugby somewhat different from many other (even professional) sports: yesterday, after their defeat agains New Zealand, "Os Lobos" of Portugal got their revenge by beating the All Blacks....at soccer. Indeed, after the match, while warming down at Gerland's stadium, the two teams improvised a soccer match which the portuguese won by 3-1. Then both teams went to the All Blacks changing room and shared some beers in the traditional "third half" of a rugby match. Would anyone imagine this during the soccer world cup?

The talks I proposed for FOSS.in, the major FLOSS conference in India, have been accepted for the Project Days, in the Debian-Ubuntu sessions. Thanks to the event organizers who will sponsor my travel to Bangalore, I'll probably leave as of Sunday Dec. 2nd and attend the entire conference from Dec. 4th to Dec. 8th. During earlier weeks, Sam Hocevar, the Debian Project Leader, also agreed to come to the conference and give two talks there. And, this morning, I had the nice surprise to discover that Lucas Nussbaum, one of our most tireless QA animators in Debian, will also come and give a talk about QA in Debian. So, that should make three French DD attending and, therefore, bring a strong Debian representation in this conference, which is something I definitely find interesting as I invested quite a lot of time and energy last years to increase the Debian presence in South Asia. This will certainly be a great occasion for us to give credit to the few people who contribute to Debian (and related projects) in India, and of course meet them in person. Please check the list of talks to get an idea of talks. Now for the challenge: the organizers expect our slides....by 7 days as of now. I don't know for Sam and Lucas but I have just begun working on one of my two talks (the i18n one, of course...you know: the one with the cute maps....). Would someone have a ready "How to contribute to Debian" talk somewhere? :-)

Two successive days with only one match. We watched Scotland-Romania (42-0) yesterday. Very serious match by the Scots who played better than their first match. They scored 6 tries against a quite weak Romanian team, with no soul. Nothing really important to say as I nearly felt asleep watching the match. Italia-Portugal today feature a good hot attendance in Parc des Princes with the numerous Portuguese or Portuguese-origin people who live in the Paris area pushing "their" team. Most of them certainly never got interested in rugby before (futebol!) but that gave a noisy stadium, particularly when portugal scored their try (and only points in the game). Italia won 31-5 after a good start, but quite weak field play later even if the Portuguese has big defensive holes. I don't really see Italia beat Scotland now and I think we'll see Scotland in 1/4th finals. Small day to come tomorrow (Wales-Japan, with a probable easy win by Wales), before a peak day on Fridady with a very much expected France-Ireland.

A few weeks ago, I announced that Debian maintainers of shadow were about to take upstream development over. This has now happened and, after final cleaning work (90% by Nicolas Fran ois and 10% by /me), we released shadow 4.0.18.2 which is just a simple take-over of the package, with inclusion of the trivial patches we had in the Debian package. Immediately after, the Debian package was uploaded (release name "Vacherin", to continue our tradition of naming releases of the Debian package from French cheese names) and we're now officially in charge of this software which is used by several Linux distros. The main contact point for shadow maintenance is the pkg-shadow-devel mailing list on Alioth.

Great final. South Africa *and* England showed that a match without tries can still be one of the best of the tournament. The first half was one of the most intense (I'd say *the* most intense) I've seen, with England playing well with their strengths (forward lanes, mauls) but felt against a tremendously defending South African team...and a perfect Percy Montgomery transforming all penalty kicks, therefore converting RSA domination. I also noticed the incredible energy of Bryan Habana who "destroyed" Sackey three times even if he weights many pounds less. I think that all rugby fans enjoyed that final even without tries (again, South Africa wins a world cup without scoring a try in final). So, that's the end of 1.5 month of rugby crazyness. Dear readers who survived until now, thank you for sharing my passion for that sport...et rendez-vous pour le tournoi des 6 nations..:-)

After Argentina-France on the first day, that one was planned to be one of the few big matches of first round. Of course, after the game won by South Africa (36-0), that seems pretty silly to say... The Springboks were definitely better than England, in all parts of the game. What stunned me, particularly after watching South Africa live , is their complete control on the game, which is a great improvement over their match against Samoa. South Africa scored three tries all of them great examples or organized attacks by the rear lines. Two tries for JP Pietersen, after 3 by Habana on first game: the South-African wing players rock. Despite this, the player of the game was definitely Jason Du Preez, the scrum half (hope this is the correct term in English) who organised all attacks from RSA. England was missing too many key players (several injured) to be able to be a menace for South Africa. They never were really dangerous, except maybe when the magic Jason Robinson has the ball in his hands (what a player!). I was particularly disappointed by their center back players, and even more particularly by Farrel. Ditto for Andy Gomarsall as scrum half. So, South Africa is now probably qualified with two quite easy games against USA and Tonga. England will have to fight to qualify and noone can tell if Samoa or Tonga can surprise them. Watching Samoa-Tonga on Sunday will be interesting and Samoa-England or Tonga-England are already key matches. A great rugby week-end is about to begin, again. Today, Wales-Australia is the match of the day, for sure, with wales playing home (some matches are not in France, but in Cardiff and Edinburgh). New Zealand-Portugal will be...interesting, though the only incertainty is the number of scored tries. And finally, Ireland-Georgia is of some interest for the French. Tomorrow, France could have hard times against Namibia. Of course, the challenge here is winning *and* scoring the bonus point. That match is 5 days before a key France-Ireland, so the challenge is also not wasting too much energy. Of course, tomorrow's top match for me is Samoa-Tonga while I whileprobably skip Fidji-Canada (too bad, I haven't seen those playing yet). BTW, if someone has a recording of the most intense match as of now (Japan-Fidji), I'd be delighted. Rugbystiquement v tre,

...and, really, we nearly never thought that Argentina could win tonight. South Africa was really too strong for them. The only domain where Argentinians dominated were scrums but this was much compensated by their great weakness on line-outs, losing something like 5 or 6 of them. South Africa thus logical won very easily...and Bryan Habana is now the best try scorer all along RWCs, along with Jonah Lomu. He is a really great player, indeed. Much much impressive South Africa: they'll be by far the favourites of the final against England, which they beated already during that World Cup. I said several times that I'm not a deep fan of RSA's play, but I could become one. Their game improved all along the World Cup and today, they probably played their best match. Two remakes next week-end: France-Argentina for the 3rd place and South Africa-England as final. That will be good matches, no doubt...and I hope that Bernard Laporte will change the French team to play against Argentina.

OK, I'm taking the risk of being ridiculous and have all my English friends laugh loudly in 3 hours. So, my bet is South Africa winning over England, 25-16 (3 tries, 2 transformed and 2 penalty kicks while England scores one trandformed try and 3 penalty kicks). The weather is *perfect* over Paris tonight. That will be a great final.

Logically, Argentina won against Scotland tonight after a.....quite boring match. Scotland, as expected for them unfortunately, wasn't able to put speed in their game, the only way to beat Argentina this year. Even with that poor game (Lamont, their rear player, was a disaster), Scotland finished quite close to ARG, who didn't play brilliantly with many approximations (Hernandez being a bit arrogant, trying to kick too many drop goals) and a bit of luck. So, nothing really impressive in that match. Does that mean that South Africa has better chances to qualify for the final: who knows? Argentina can be unpredictable...but it seems they are a little bit burned out (they don't really have 30 top players and some of their key players appear tired). The semi-finals will feature France-England (about 50-50 chances from what we saw up to now) and South Africa-Argentina (60-40, in my opinion). Next week-end, Stade de France.

Sunday's matches featured three interesting games. We didn't watch much of Fidji-Canada because it was scheduled at 14:00 but announced at 21:00 on the schedule I had..:-(.. That's too bad because these two teams are the only two I haven't seen during an entire game yet. Fidji won after being menaced by Canada up to the last minute. So Fidji keep their chances of qualifying, which they'll have to win by beating Wales. Samoa-Tonga (15-19) was very promizing and turned out to be a deception for me. We watched only the first half of it (Eurosport wasn't broadcasting it live... suckers!). The suspense was there, particularly at the end of the game, when Tonga were playing only with 13 players for five minutes, while leading by 4 points only. However, Samoa obviously played quite badly and never really succeeded during that match to push their very physical way to play rugby. Tonga keep their chances to qualify, which they'll have to defend against England. France-Namibia was the last match and was obviously eagerly awaited by most of my fellow French supporters. Seen as "the match of revival" (as if losing to Argentina was a shame....), this was indeed a mor ethan easy match, as one would expected. Anyway, France played it well and played it the way it had to be played, so even if 87-10 doesn't really mean anything (particularly when playing against 14 players most of the time), they used all the strength of the team to build that victory and I believe there are still many strength in the French team. Critical rendez-vous against Ireland on Friday. Today (Monday): no match. Tomorrow, only one (Scotland-Romania in Murrayfield: critical match for the Scots). Everybody, us included, is resting.:)