Mourgue adamant Tricolours are still very much alive

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.

No-one is hurting more than the players after the 78-4 loss to Samoa in Sydney in their opening match of the tournament.

“Yeah, that’s a tough game to swallow,” Mourgue told NRL.com. 

“We saw what the highest level is like in rugby league. And obviously we were far from that.

“But the competition is not finished – we’re going to learn from this and we have two more games to improve and that is what we will do. 

“We 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.” 

Helping Mourgue’s resilience is the fact England are likely to have six Wigan players in their line-up – halfback Harry Smith, hooker-utility Brad O’Neill, forwards Luke Thompson, Junior Nsemba, Sam Walters and Ethan Havard – who the Frenchman is more than familiar with. 

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. 

The 27-year-old said last Friday’s opening World Cup round was a step-up again from those two high-profile games. 

“It felt really fast and Samoa is the type of team that one-on-one they are deceptive and tough to get a hold on,” Mourgue said. 

“We need to be really connected in ‘D’ and we lost that connection at points in Friday’s game. 

“We do have speed and some great forwards but compared with top-quality nations we are still a bit under them. 

“But we’re not going away.

“There are still positives and I think you saw that in our attack, as that’s the way we want to play more. 

“We like to try and make something happen and take a few risks.” 

That might underpin the game plan against England, who have won 44 of 53 meetings between the two nations.

Their most recent Test resulted in a 40-8 win to England in Toulouse in 2024 while France’s last victory was at the 1981 European Championships, when tries were still three points and they snuck home 5-1.

“We will reflect after this game to see how we can be a better side because we have a great rivalry with England – we always want to beat them when we play them," he said.

“We’ll be playing against some (Super League) teammates as well so that’s another challenge to be really good against them.” 

Meantime, Mourgue has time to recover after a few bone-rattlers from Samoan winger Brian To’o. 

“All good – fair tackles - everything is still in place,” he said, feeling his chest.