Cullen to lead way against beefy French

LEO CULLEN gets another crack at captaining Ireland when Declan Kidney’s outfit switch from the rain of Edinburgh to the good weather in Bordeaux tomorrow night.

Cullen, who became Ireland’s 100th captain last weekend in the absence of the injured Brian O’Driscoll, is one of just seven survivors from the Irish starting team beaten at the death by Scotland.

Keith Earls, Ronan O’Gara, Eoin Reddan, Cian Healy, Rory Best, Mike Ross, Donncha O’Callaghan and Sean O’Brien come in for Fergus McFadden, Jonathan Sexton, Tomás O’Leary, Tom Court, Sean Cronin, Tony Buckley, Mike McCarthy and Niall Ronan respectively.

Interestingly, a positive performance in Edinburgh from Donncha Ryan sees him retain a place in the side, albeit switching from second to back row.

Following the French team announcement that includes several heavy hitters in a somewhat experimental team, Kidney has cautiously decided to have something big in reserve too, in Paul O’Connell and Jamie Heaslip, whilst almost certainly giving youth it’s fling through uncapped Ireland U20 scrum-half Conor Murray.

“I obviously have a larger plan in mind and this is the second game, everyone wants to win every game and I think the team we had last week was good enough to win that game.

“I believe the team we’ve picked here is good enough to win on Saturday night. So that’ll do for me and it’s my job then to have a bigger plan in mind.”

The coach emphasised that Tommy Bowe was ruled out with a foot injury of no long-term concern while David Wallace was simply being held back.

But Kidney expects his players to front up all the same and France to come out with all guns blazing.

With a new front row in action for Ireland — clearly much closer to their best combination — Kidney hopes for a decisive response to any challenge.

“Obviously the scrum is a pretty important part of their game and we need to stand up in that area. I think they’re [France] going to be pretty ferocious when they come out, they’re playing at home.

“It’s not a ground that they play in very often but it’s a rugby town as well and no doubt they’ll be pretty passionate when they play there.

“We need to be up for that early on and if we stand off them it will be a pretty long day at the office. So it’s important that we get into the thick of the battle pretty early on and take it from there.

“They have a short build-up, they named their squad a few weeks back and I suppose they’re all pretty gunning to be starting well going into the World Cup.”