Over half of the Toulouse team, and just under half of the Clemont team had played in the Rugby World Cup. Not all of them for France - Kelleher being one obvious example at scrum half for Toulouse, but with a rough count from memory there were about 20 of France's RWC squad in the squads on show at home.
Whilst this made for a high octane (although not massively high scoring) and very competitive match, you've got to think that even though not all of those players would probably make the current team (retirement, form, coach's preference), it's little wonder that France looked rather poor in Australia. In fact, what is amazing is that they managed, apart from 10 minutes or so, to compete against Australia at home. Australia did deserve to win based on what I saw, but if that intercept try hadn't been scored and if France had scored one try with their 5 minutes camped 5m away from the Australia line - both important ifs, but not unlikely ones - 27-20 would probably have been a fair result and pretty achievable. That's a fair degree of testament to the strength in depth of French Rugby.
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