BERNARD JACKMAN: French tails already up

The mood in France has been very optimistic this week. It’s almost a polar opposite of the build up to the England game when all the talk was doom and gloom.

This week the French public are expecting their team to produce a first win in the Six Nations. But the starting team was announced yesterday morning rocked that core belief a little.

The psyche of the French takes a while to fathom. They were beaten before they travelled to London and always feel away games are particularly hard but England really freaks them out. They really didn’t believe they could win there given how poor their record against them is at Twickenham. They were unnerved by the systematic way England beat Ireland and Scotland and the way they stuck to the game plan.