Ireland captain Rory Best has reflected on the huge mental shift when it comes to playing France and says establishing consistency under Joe Schmidt has been key.
The Ulster hooker is one of three changes to the Ireland side to face Les Bleus at the Aviva Stadium (4.50pm, live on RTÉ Radio 1 and RTÉ2) after recovering from the stomach bug which forced his absence in the rout of Italy last time out.
Both teams have a win and a loss from their opening two games, and there has been little to choose between the sides in recent years.
Indeed the aggregate score in Ireland’s last five Six Nations games against France is 79-71 in favour of the men in green, just an eight-point difference over the course of 400 minutes.
Under Guy Noves, the French have threatened to move away from attritional, forward-based rugby and towards a more traditional, off-loading game, and Best is wary of the danger they will face this weekend.
"I think the French are definitely a team that you've got to fear in terms of their rugby ability," he said. “It's massively important to hold onto the ball.
"This French team is coming here as a very, very dangerous side, especially off turnover ball and broken-field play.
"We need to make sure we put them under pressure when we have the ball, make sure we keep it and force them to make a lot of tackles.
"We know they are very dangerous with the ball, but from turnovers they can be lethal."
Best will win his 102nd cap tomorrow and in a Test career that is 12 years and counting, says there has been a huge mental shift in playing France.
“When I first came into the squad, it was a real rarity that we beat them,” he said. “Obviously now we have won some crucial games over the last couple of years.
“From the point of view of very rarely winning to winning as many as we lose now. We know them a lot better than we used to.
Ireland captain Rory Best on how the Irish mentality against France has changed over the course of his international career pic.twitter.com/843b6kdca1
— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) February 24, 2017
“It’s a different mindset to playing for Ireland now than there was 12 years ago. We firmly believe we can beat anyone on our day.”
With Six Nations titles in 2014 and 2015, and a clean sweep of South Africa, New Zealand and Australia last year for the first time, Best believes the winning mentality has permeated right around the squad, despite the opening round defeat to Scotland.
The 34-year-old argues that consistency of preparation is as crucial as the consistency of performances and credits Schmidt for that particular development.
“That’s something that we have really driven hard...probably since Joe [Schmidt] came in," he said.
"We always talked about how we wanted to be a consistent team, but probably didn’t really know how to get there.
“Now we feel we do because of the preparation we put in.”
Watch Scotland v Wales and Ireland v France live on RTÉ2 from 2pm Saturday, listen live on Radio 1 Saturday Sport and follow our live blog on RTÉ Sport Online.
Watch Ireland U20 v France U20 live on RTÉ2 from 8pm Friday. Watch Ireland Women v France Women live on RTÉ2 from 12.30pm Sunday and listen live on LW252 and Radio 1 Extra. Follow live blogs on RTÉ Sport Online.
