O'Sullivan keeps the faith

In naming an unchanged team and an unchanged bench, Eddie O'Sullivan has made a statement of faith in his chosen players. He is also clearly of the view that last Saturday's poor performance against Italy was a blip; that medication rather than surgery will ensure a pick-me-up in Paris on Saturday.

The one potential change would occur if Denis Leamy were found guilty of stamping at his disciplinary hearing in London today, in which case Anthony Foley would start his first Test since last season's Six Nations' finale against Wales in Cardiff.

O'Sullivan will travel over with Leamy to a Heathrow hotel along with their legal representative, Brian McLoughlin, but the Irish coach didn't sound particularly hopeful of Leamy being cleared of stamping Paul Griffen in the 75th minute last Saturday.

"I don't know. If he's cleared tomorrow then he'll play on Saturday." Other than that "we'll just have to wait and see what the outcome of the hearing is," he said.

Leamy definitely made contact once in bringing his foot down on Griffen, who was at the base of a maul-cum-ruck in which David Wallace had manufactured a steal, and although he looked like he was doing so a second time on closer examination Leamy pulled his foot back before making any contact. Nor did it stop Griffen immediately jumping to his feet, but the very fact Leamy has been cited has raised concerns in the Irish camp he might be censured, in which case the minimum ban would be six weeks and would rule him out of the remainder of the championship.

In any event, beyond that potential inconvenience, the Irish coach wasn't of a mind to change things. "It wasn't a good performance collectively so I think there's no real case for making any changes or any sweeping changes.

"Yes we need to improve our performance in Paris on last weekend. We had a look at it and we could have forced a few changes if we wanted to," he added, "but I think you'd probably be victimising somebody. I think it was a bad performance in general.

"You couldn't put your finger on anyone and say anyone played exceptionally well or exceptionally badly, it was just a generally disappointing performance. So I think what you've got to do in those situations is you've got to give guys a vote of confidence and say go out next week and prove that last week was a glitch."

There were, undoubtedly, arguments for, say, bringing Donncha O'Callaghan's more notable physicality into the white hot heat of the Parisian fray.

Likewise the backrow, regardless of the outcome to Leamy's disciplinary hearing, and the outside three, whether by recalling the in-form Girvan Dempsey at fullback and switching Geordan Murphy to the wing, where he has been on fire for Leicester in recent months, or recalling the more proven, pacy finishing of Denis Hickie in a straight swap for Tommy Bowe.

In any event, some players will need to step up their performance levels more than most, notably Malcolm O'Kelly and Simon Easterby, who had subdued games against the Italians. They are both vastly experienced players of course, capable of rising to a challenge such as this, and throughout his record 76-cap career, O'Kelly has shown us the bigger the game, the bigger his game. For his and Ireland's sake, that needs to be the case this Saturday.

In terms of confidence, France are capable of swinging from one extreme to the other in the course of one match, never mind from one week to the next and in subscribing to the popular "backlash" theory doing the rounds, O'Sullivan didn't expect France to commit as many turnovers (26) as they did in losing to Scotland.

"Yeah, I would expect a backlash from France. They'll probably look at some changes because of injuries and also some changes to freshen things up, and I'd say anyone who gets on the French team next Saturday won't be leaving anything in their locker."

As for Ireland's performance, O'Sullivan pinpointed "certain areas", and primarily Ireland's use of the ball with a slightly different game plan, "but again, try to be more accurate in our execution".

While O'Sullivan maintained that the defence was "excellent", Ireland will assuredly need to close the space down and not defend as softly, especially on the outside, as they did against Italy.

A somewhat callow replacements' bench also remains unchanged. Save for David Humphreys and O'Callaghan, the replacements have 24 caps between them.

It would be asking a lot either of the Bests, Rory and Simon, or Johnny O'Connor, Eoin Redden or Andrew Trimble, to come into a troubled cause in the Stade de France and help change the game around.

You can't help but wonder if one of two of the more experienced campaigners, be it Shane Byrne, Reggie Corrigan, Keith Gleeson or Foley (if he's not promoted to the starting line-up), and Dempsey or Hickie, wouldn't be more capable of making a bigger impact - like Humphreys, who by some distance has been Ireland's most effective impact replacement in recent years.

France have delayed naming their team until tomorrow in the hope that players such as Damien Traille and Serge Betsen, who have played little rugby of late, prove their fitness sufficiently to start in light of the injuries to Nicolas Brusque and Julien Bonnaire.

The latter was caught in touching down by a late lunge by Scotland's Chris Patterson - hardly one of the game's hitmen - but this is something which is becoming increasingly commonplace and needs to be specifically outlawed.