With the surname Poirot it was perhaps inevitable that France’s loose-head prop would develop a heightened interest in using “the little grey cells”. Front-rows have definitely changed. While it is 36 years since the England prop Colin Smart was infamously tricked into swilling aftershave at the post-match banquet in Paris, the thoughtful Jefferson Poirot explains how his preparation for Saturday’s Test against the English will mainly be in the mind.
“I have a big focus on mental preparation,” says the 25-year-old. “I love it and I work on it a lot. There’s a lot of hypnosis when I work with my mental coach.”
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Cynics might suggest watching videos of plodding France sides over the past few seasons would induce a trance-like state but for the Bordeaux-Bègles prop the sessions with his mental coach, Gershon Pinon, are a serious business.
“You either believe in it or you don’t and I believe in it a lot,” says Poirot. “When I’m here at Marcoussis I can’t work with him and I have an audio recording that helps me prepare for the match. It is organised thematically as I prepare for scrums, my role in attack, my play without the ball and my defence. The session is the same whether I’m with my mental coach or on my own. When I am on my own I can visualise my opponents and the stadium.”
Poirot says that after scrum visualisation with Pinon he often needs to massage his neck as his muscles tighten and fatigue kicks in as if he had been packing down. He credits the mental techniques for helping him through France’s opener against Ireland, his first game in a month. Making 16 tackles in that narrow defeat and being active in the rucks proved his fitness and Poirot has retained the No 1 shirt in the subsequent two matches.
A frank Poirot admits: “We knew not having quick ball was a weakness ahead of the tournament and we are improving. Teams were targeting us in this area and our aim is to have as much fast ball as possible and that means getting it away from the rucks in less than three seconds. We did that more than 50% of the time against Italy.”
Beating Italy, a first victory for France in a year, has lifted the mood and at Murrayfield Scotland showed the way to get at England, who remain the team every Frenchman wants to beat. “There was animosity every time I played against England for age-group French teams,” Poirot says.
“We were optimistic even before Scotland’s win against England. Scotland were effective and above all very aggressive. You simply cannot allow England to settle into their game as they score a lot of tries from strike moves off scrums and lineouts. We need to upset their rhythm as the Scots did. They forced an under-pressure England to throw the ball around any old how. We need to be good at the breakdown and be really aggressive. When you are on the back foot against England it’s really hard to avoid haemorrhaging points. We need to have possession.”
Poirot, who missed the 2017 Six Nations campaign with a calf injury, has faced England only once, missing a tackle on Danny Care that led to the scrum-half scoring two seasons ago in Paris as Eddie Jones’s side sealed the grand slam. “I don’t know if personal revenge is the right way to think about it but I certainly don’t want England to come here and beat us again. England have been the top nation since 2015. We’re hungry because we’ve only got one win in the tournament and we could easily have been on three wins from three.”
When you are on the back foot against England it’s really hard to avoid haemorrhaging points. We need to have possession
Working with Joe Worsley at Bordeaux-Bègles and the fitness coach Tim Exeter earlier in his career has given Poirot a healthy respect for organised “Anglo-Saxon” coaching methods: “I think England have a great domestic league and I’d like to play in it one day, later in my career,” he says.
So how did Poirot, born near Paris in 1992, end up with an English sounding first name? “My father is Anglophone and he wanted me to have an Anglo-Saxon name. I don’t speak English though.”
Poirot’s Nigerian father – who once worked for the NHS – separated from his French mother when Jefferson was three and five years later Patricia, a nurse, took her children to live in the Dordogne. There Jefferson made a name for himself as a back-row player and was scouted by Brive at 15. It was a wrench for him to leave as he considered himself to be the man of the household but Patricia left her son no choice: “She told me it was a golden opportunity.”
After a single first-team season he moved on to Bordeaux-Bègles where he must have impressed Jacques Brunel, who left the Gironde to take over as the France coach before this year’s Six Nations.
Poirot has tempered an early propensity for conflict with his coaches and comes across as mature and controlled for one of his age. Why? “Your questions are difficult,” he says. “I’m relaxed and in control because it’s only the Tuesday before the match. I’ll start to visualise the scrums later in the week. For now I’m trying to store up my energy as I’ll need all of it on Saturday in order to hope to beat you English!”