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\n Arthur Mourgue skips clear of Ezra Mam during Hull KR’s World Club Challenge win over the Broncos.
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Beaten but not broken, France fullback Arthur Mourgue has implored Tricolours fans to keep the faith as the French head to Perth to take on England in Round 2.<\/p>\n
No-one is hurting more than the players after the 78-4 loss to Samoa in Sydney in their opening match of the tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, that\u2019s a tough game to swallow,\u201d Mourgue told NRL.com.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw what the highest level is like in rugby league. And obviously we were far from that.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the competition is not finished \u2013 we\u2019re going to learn from this and we have two more games to improve and that is what we will do.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did have more line breaks against Samoa than the last time we played them, but in defence we have much work to do still, conceding too many points.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\n Arthur Mourgue skips clear of Ezra Mam during Hull KR’s World Club Challenge win over the Broncos.
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Helping Mourgue\u2019s resilience is the fact England are likely to have six Wigan players in their line-up \u2013 halfback Harry Smith, hooker-utility Brad O\u2019Neill, forwards Luke Thompson, Junior Nsemba, Sam Walters and Ethan Havard \u2013 who the Frenchman is more than familiar with.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His Hull KR team beat Wigan 24-6 to win the 2025 Super League premiership before taking down the Broncos 30-24 in February to win the World Club Challenge.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 27-year-old said last Friday\u2019s opening World Cup round was a step-up again from those two high-profile games.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Samoa v France \u2013 Round 1, 2026<\/p>\n
\u201cIt felt really fast and Samoa is the type of team that one-on-one they are deceptive and tough to get a hold on,\u201d Mourgue said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to be really connected in \u2018D\u2019 and we lost that connection at points in Friday\u2019s game.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do have speed and some great forwards but compared with top-quality nations we are still a bit under them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we\u2019re not going away.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are still positives and I think you saw that in our attack, as that\u2019s the way we want to play more.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe like to try and make something happen and take a few risks.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
That might underpin the game plan against England, who have won 44 of 53 meetings between the two nations.<\/p>\n
Their most recent Test resulted in a 40-8 win to England in Toulouse in 2024 while France\u2019s last victory was at the 1981 European Championships, when tries were still three points and they snuck home 5-1.<\/p>\n
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Guillermo Aispuro-Bichet Try<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will reflect after this game to see how we can be a better side because we have a great rivalry with England \u2013 we always want to beat them when we play them,” he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll be playing against some (Super League) teammates as well so that\u2019s another challenge to be really good against them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Meantime, Mourgue has time to recover after a few bone-rattlers from Samoan winger Brian To\u2019o.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAll good \u2013 fair tackles – everything is still in place,\u201d he said, feeling his chest.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Beaten but not broken, France fullback Arthur Mourgue has implored Tricolours fans to keep the faith as the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":935820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-935819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=935819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/935820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=935819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=935819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=935819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}