I added the real players to France and England and shut down the offloads, cranked up driving and kicking and tweaked a few other settings and it's like playing a new game, it was great. Defeated England 10-0 as France on 10 minute halves with England having 58% possession, 64% territory and they had 11-5 line breaks. It seems the game counts passes as offloads because it says there were 44 to 52 offloads but that wasn't the case.
For the first 3/4 of the game England were happy to kick for territory but towards the end they ran the ball more, without the crazy half pitch over the head offloads, and even put in some grubbers close to the line. Shontayne Hape made a wonderful break, stepped my winger but a cover tackle took him in to touch it was a great play all round.
It's boring as bat shit editing the teams but if you give yourself 2 hours or something and do all or most of the teams it plays a different game. Maybe on Pro it would be a little wild but on hard it was great.