Starting with the Cambarabero brothers, through Robert Paparemborde and his battles with the Pontypool front row, Serge Blanco, Olivier Magne and Thierry Dusautoir, I have watched as they attained sublime peaks without ever quite achieving the consistency to become world champions.

At one point in 2000, I had grown so close to them that I was invited to witness that great warrior Abdelatif Benazzi receive the insignia of chevalier de la Légion d’honneur from Martine Aubry, a senior Government Minister.

But in all those decades, I think there have been few periods of play as significant as the second half of the Six Nations clash with Wales at Principality Stadium in Cardiff on Friday (March 11).

For nearly all the 40 minutes, Les Bleus seemed to be camped in their own half as the home side strove mightily for the single try that would have erased the slender deficit.

Yet at the end of it all, Wales had mustered not a single point; the French line, indeed, was rarely threatened, with the moment of greatest jeopardy coming when centre Jonathan Davies just failed to cling onto an inside pass.

The result leaves France on course for a Grand Slam, which they should complete against England on the outskirts of Paris on Saturday (March 19).

Those 40 minutes encapsulated what seems to me a fundamental transformation in France’s approach to international rugby - the value placed on sound defence.

Until quite recently, whatever the reality, the French approach to winning rugby matches has usually appeared to be: "You know what: however many the opposition score, we will score more."

This was executed most gloriously in that astonishing Rugby World Cup semi-final at Twickenham in 1999 when, trailing 24-10 just after half-time against the New Zealand All Blacks, and with the fearsome wing-three-quarter Jonah Lomu in his pomp, the French fought back quite magnificently - and wholly unexpectedly - to win by 43 points to 31.

Of course, they then went down rather tamely to an underrated Australian side in the final - you may remember those photographs of the towering lock forward John Eales receiving the trophy from Her Majesty the Queen.

In this attachment, or apparent attachment, to “le flair français” and attack, attack, attack, French rugby union teams could be said to have been soul-mates of those Dutch football sides who took so much joy in their skills and the exquisite patterns which they enabled them to weave that they sometimes gave every appearance of disdaining mere goals, the actual currency of the game.

It is I think no coincidence that the current French set-up includes individuals who have played a full part in some of the greatest episodes of sublime brilliance, while also experiencing the bitterness of losing the most important matches of all.

Fabien Galthié, the present coach and selector, and Raphaël Ibanez, general manager, were both key members of that 1999 French side.

But the tell-tale signal that French attitudes to the defensive side of the game had changed - and I do not think it is my native British chauvinism talking here - came with another hire: that of former rugby league great Shaun Edwards, born in Wigan, north-west England, as defence coach.

In just over a decade on Wales’s coaching team, Edwards helped the Principality to four Six Nations titles, including three Grand Slams.

To me, the moment when France hired Edwards is comparable to the moment when the latest Paris Olympic and Paralympic bid hired the uncompromising communications guru Mike Lee, who also hailed from the north of England, to be a senior member of its team.

You knew straight away that this time the French capital was utterly serious about doing everything necessary to win, and had swallowed its pride to the extent of employing the man who had plotted Paris’s downfall in the epic 2012 Olympic bid race.

Whatever the French is for "if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em", Paris had done it - and, when it took on Edwards, the French Rugby Federation did the same.

A tweet by The Guardian’s rugby union correspondent Robert Kitson after France had completed Friday’s defensive masterclass and emerged with a hard-won 13-9 victory summed it up very nicely.

"Man of the match? Shaun Edwards," Kitson wrote - not to take anything away from the actual man of the match, French hooker-cum-human-dynamo Julien Marchand.

France are the only one of international rugby union’s big five - New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, and England being the others - who have not won the Rugby World Cup.

It must have occurred to the French rugby authorities in 2017 when they won the race to host next year’s 10^th World Cup tournament, that this would present their best chance for the foreseeable future of finally lifting the handsome golden Webb Ellis Cup.

With Edwards’s defensive genius supplementing the sublime skills of players such as scrum-half Antoine Dupont and centre Gaël Fickou, they look to be setting about the task with impressive single-mindedness and efficiency.