France coach Philippe Saint-Andre calls for cultural change to save dying breed of nation's fly-halves So what is going on? "To be honest I think it could be a cultural thing," says bemused France coach Philippe Saint-André. In French rugby the boss - le patron - is normally the scrum-half. He is the guy who leads the forwards, sometimes he even calls the line-outs. Often he is the captain as well. I am thinking of Jerome Gallion, Jacques Fouroux, Philippe Berbizier, Fabien Galthié, Dimitri Yachvili. And fly-half? Every time France lose a game we sack the fly-half, it is always the fly-half's fault. This has been going on for 100 years. In England, New Zealand and many other countries the fly-half is the key man and most often they change the scrum-half. We are French so we do things in a different way. Even when we have players like Parra and Michalak who played their rugby at fly-half when they were young, the first thing we do when they turn professional is make them into a scrum-half. We have to find new fly-half talent - Jules Plisson at Stade Français is one - but we also have to change culturally. We must understand that it is not always the fault of the No 10. For the time being Saint-André is trying to bring some much-needed consistency to his selection at half-back. He sees the mercurial Michalak and Montpellier's François Trinh-Duc as his two premier fly-halves, while Parra and Maxime Machenaud - the major discovery of Les Bleus" visit to Argentina last summer - are his front-line scrum-halves, although Montpellier's Benoît Paillaugue is beginning to knock very loudly on the door. His intention, barring injury, is to stick with the quartet in his squad, while busily looking for the next generation of playmakers. They have got to be somewhere. The search for a long-term international fly-half is not helped at present by the large number of overseas players occupying that position on a regular basis at their T14 clubs - Wilkinson (Toulon), James Hook (Perpignan), Felipe Contepomi (Stade Francais), Luke McAlister (Toulouse), Brock James (Clermont), Juan Martín Hernández (Racing), Nicholas Sanchez (Bordeaux Bègles), Conrad Barnard (Agen), Dan Kirkpatrick (Castres) and Aaron Bancroft (Grenoble). T14 is an extraordinary melting pot of rugby cultures and nationalities and a compelling competition to watch, but as the cash-rich clubs attract players from around the globe, many in France are beginning to wonder whether it actually works against the national team. Not least Saint-André. France have huge competition in some positions for this Six Nations - at centre we have Maxime Mermoz, Florian Fritz, Wesley Fofana, Aurélien Rougerie, Mathieu Bastareaud and Yann David - but not so much at No 10 and also at tight-head prop. In France last season we had just two tight-heads who were first choice for their clubs. On the wing last year I would say that of the 28 first-choice wings in the French T14, just eight were French. It is becoming difficult.