Marc Lievremont last night challenged his France players to produce more of the same for the remainder of the RBS 6 Nations and the rest of 2009 after seeing them upset the form book to end Wales' Grand Slam dreams.
Les Bleus were in a state of disarray heading into the Stade de France showdown with the reigning champions, but they triumphed 21-16 to stay in the hunt for the title themselves.
Without key players because of injury and with just five days of preparation as opposed to two weeks for the Welsh, France were installed as underdogs for the match.
But they rose to the challenge in adversity to ease the pressure on head coach Lievremont.
'We are not working towards playing a match like that based around six or eight (players), we are not working towards attacking this type of match with a knife to our throat in the position of an outsider,' he said.
'We are working to winning by being consistent. The players proved they were capable of raising their level to this intensity and concentration in a match.
'They have raised the bar. The difficulty is now stringing together results like this.
'I hope that next year we go to the Millennium Stadium with the statistics in our favour - that would mean we have gone through 2009 and the start of 2010 with the consistency we had here.'
France hogged possession in the first half but did little with it, Lee Byrne's try and eight Stephen Jones points putting Wales 13-3 up.
But Morgan Parra kicked a penalty and converted a try by the peerless Thierry Dusautoir to level the scores by half-time and Les Bleus stepped it up a gear after the beak.
Cedric Heymans' try and another penalty from Parra put France ahead and they survived the last 10 minutes by just conceding a James Hook penalty as the Welsh failed to land a late killer blow.
'The victory went against all logic seeing our complicated preparation with just five days' training - we can't do that every time,' Lievremont said.
'We were 13-3 down and it was tough but the players dug in. Our defence was total and it was a great performance in terms of our tactical control.
'Sometimes we are affected by journalists saying we can only play wide but we showed we can play down the middle as well.'
