Sunday 20 March 2016 19:00, UK
France coach Guy Noves insists his team have made progress during the Six Nations despite finishing fifth in the table with just two victories.
The French opened the tournament with narrow wins over Italy (23-21) and Ireland (10-9) before going down to Wales (19-10), Scotland (29-18) and England (31-21).
"Our goal was to first identify a type of player with whom we want to work and I think we really managed to put that in place," said Noves.
"The guys understood what our project was, where we wanted to go together, what the honour of the shirt represented. There wasn't a moment where we relaxed that.
"It's good, it's the base, we will be able to lean on that, we have a human side, we're competitors, at times warriors.
"Now we have to help give them the weapons needed to get closer to our rivals.
"We can say to ourselves that the project is starting to work. Once we fix a few details, we can again become competitive.
"Experience is also increasing and that is vital because the players are very young in this new project."
Noves, who left Toulouse to take over from Philippe Saint-Andre following a poor World Cup which saw France exit after a humiliating quarter-final defeat by eventual winners New Zealand, will now prepare his team for their summer tour to Argentina.
France are scheduled to play two Test matches against Argentina, on June 18 and 25, but without players who will compete in the Top 14 semi-finals set for June 17 and 18.
"We'll have to have different goals on the tour. We can't have the same goals as we did in the Six Nations during which we used the same group of players," added Noves, who led Toulouse to four European Cup triumphs.
"It will allow us to open a little bit vis-a-vis the players chosen. We will try to integrate these new players in a matter of a few days. We'll have to deal with jetlag and prepare for matches against an Argentina team whose level we know well.
"We'll build a team for the end-of-season tour which will play a side in full swing ahead of the Rugby Championship."
