France certainly can choose to be better than they are. Catalans players don't have to drop out with 'injuries', they don't need to schedule a France game on the same day as a Toulouse one, they can work much harder to develop and expand the game in France and their players pool etc. There is heaps France can do to improve themselves. Yes sure they still probably won't be good enough in the foreseeable future but it's plainly false to say there is nothing they can do.
Sure Lancashire and Yorkshire players can choose to bother not trying. However there is ample evidence, going back to the first one of these games I watched in the 1980's, to say they won't.