Marsh boost for in-form France

France will be at full strength for their mouth-watering World Cup quarter-final encounter with Ireland in Melbourne on Sunday.

Centre Tony Marsh has been passed fit after a slight Achilles injury and will take his place at outside centre in a French team which is unchanged from the 51-9 hammering of Scotland at Telstra Stadium a fortnight ago.

After recording a 100% record of bonus-point wins during the pool stages, Bernard Laporte’s side have avoided the kind of troubles which have afflicted fellow group winners Australia, New Zealand and England, and have been tipped by some to become the first northern hemisphere nation to win the Webb Ellis Cup.

However, their recent record against Ireland is not good, with just one win in the last four meetings, the 2002 triumph in Paris which sealed the Grand Slam.

Having studied the video of Ireland’s single-point defeat to Australia last weekend, there are some changes on the bench from the Scottish win, notably the introduction of Patrick Tabacco over Christian Labit as back-row cover.

“We need to have a fourth line-out jumper available to us,” said Laporte.

“Ireland really made Australia suffer in that area of the field. It is one of their major strengths, both in defence and attack, and we have to ensure we are fully covered in case we get any injuries.”

Laporte admitted he was surprised by the struggle Australia had to put away Eddie O’Sullivan’s men and is anticipating a tough struggle against the green machine at Telstra Dome.

Much will depend on the ability of back-row trio Serge Betsen, Olivier Magne and Imanol Harinordoquy to close down the space available to Ronan O’Gara and Brian O’Driscoll in particular, while fly-half Freddie Michalak needs to live up to his lofty billing.

“I read somewhere that France were the favourites for the game,” said team manager Joe Maso.

“I’m not sure about that because the last time we played them Ireland won.

“They have some excellent players, particularly O’Driscoll and Keith Wood, and we are expecting an extremely tough game.”

France team to play Ireland in the World Cup quarter-final at Telstra Dome on Sunday, November 9 (7.30am Irish time).

N Brusque (Biarritz); A Rougerie (Montferrand), T Marsh (Montferrand), Y Jauzion (Toulouse), C Dominici (Stade Francais); F Michalak (Toulouse), F Galthie (Stade Francais, cpt); J-J Crenca (Agen), R Ibanez (Saracens), S Marconnet (Stade Francais), F Pelous (Toulouse), J Thion (Biarritz), S Betsen (Biarritz), O Magne (Montferrand), I Harinordoquy (Pau).

Replacements: Y Bru (Toulouse), O Milloud (Bourgoin), O Brouzet (Montferrand), P Tabacco (Stade Francais), G Merceron (Montferrand), B Liebenberg (Stade Francais), P Elhorga (Agen).