Aurélien Rougerie, the long-striding blond in France's No13 shirt, is in no doubt about the nature of Saturday's meeting with Wales. "It's as though we're preparing for the World Cup final itself," he said on Tuesday, talking to the assembled media in the team's Auckland hotel.

Many eyes will be on Rougerie at the start of the weekend's first semi-final, awaiting his seemingly inevitable clash with Jamie Roberts, Wales's No12. Here are two 6ft 4in, 100kg-plus centres, each with the potential to bash holes in the opposing defence, or at least to attract the attention of so many defenders that gaps appear for others to exploit.

Not surprisingly, the 31-year-old Rougerie is an admirer of the Welshman, who is his junior by seven years and will be making his 37th international appearance while the Frenchman picks up his 70th cap in his third World Cup. While Rougerie only discovered a semblance of his usual form in time for last Saturday's quarter-final against England, Roberts has been creating havoc from the start of the tournament.

"He and the team move forward every time he touches the ball," Rougerie said. "The team relies on him to a great extent, so that also represents a challenge for us. It's something we're going to be needing to look at very carefully as part of our preparation."

For two teams who have reached the penultimate state of the tournament, there could hardly have been a more striking contrast between their fortunes over the past month. Where France's morale hit rock bottom with two defeats in their pool matches, leading observers to compare their general lack of togetherness to the meltdown of their football-playing equivalents in South Africa a year ago, Wales arrived in a mood of quiet confidence, extracted succour rather than discouragement from a narrow defeat in their opening match against South Africa, and have won praise for their composure and an esprit de corps which appears to have its origins in the maturity of their younger players.

"So far in this tournament the Welsh have been very impressive," Rougerie said, echoing a sentiment expressed by his head coach, Marc Lièvremont, and other squad members. "They've shown a disconcerting fluidity," he added.

Having followed his father by spending his entire club career with Clermont Auvergne, a club with a renowned academy, he has also been struck by the quality of Wales's emerging crop of younger players, including Rhys Priestland, Jonathan Davies, Dan Lydiate and the captain, Sam Warburton. "I come from a club that has a great training centre," he said, "so for me it's not really a surprise to see these young players coming through. They have the assets of great players, and obviously that's determining what they do on the pitch."

Rougerie was among the players criticised from France's poor performances in their pool matches, including the defeats by the All Blacks and Tonga. In a development reminiscent of the response of two England teams to disastrous early form in the football World Cup of 1990 and the rugby equivalent of 2007, the squad reacted by taking matters at least partially out of the hands of their coach.

On the day after the traumatic collapse against Tonga, Lièvremont announced that the squad would prepare for the quarter-final by watching videos of England. The players demurred. At the instigation of a close-knit group of five graduates of the little Bourgoin-Jallieu club – Lionel Nallet, Julien Bonnaire, Pascal Papé, Julien Pierre and Morgan Parra – they told the head coach that they would prefer to review the tapes of their match against the Pacific Islanders, and to discuss it among themselves, while the coaches got on with thinking about their next opponents.

"I think we needed to spend some time together as a team," Rougerie said, "so that we could draw from all our experiences and all move in the same direction together." The players will not discuss the meeting in much greater detail, but by all accounts they were brutally frank in the analysis of each other's lack of appetite for the battle.

"We watched the video as a group," William Servat, the hooker and leader of the front five, said, "and we all spoke about the issues that concerned us. We spoke very honestly and told each other what needed to be done. The differences we had were plain to see, especially against Tonga. Against England, we played as we should play."

Their reservations about Lièvremont's regime are said to be unchanged, particularly in respect of his training methods, which many of them find inferior to those they experience with their clubs in France's Top 14. But they seem to have found a way to absorb those "differences", as Servat put it, rediscovering something of the dash and danger expected from a team in the blue shirts in a victory over England that was more convincing than the eventual 19-12 scoreline might suggest.

"We need the time to recover from such a high-level match," said Rougerie, who missed training on Tuesday while receiving further treatment for a shoulder injury suffered earlier in the tournament but expects to rejoin his colleagueson Wednesday. "I don't think the group is in a bad way, physically speaking. Psychologically, we had to beat a very strong England team, and that obviously plays a part now. I feel that we are relaxed – but not too relaxed, and we're looking to pull together and become as organised as possible for this match against Wales."

His head coach, having come to terms with seeing his authority successfully challenged, shrewdly diagnosed the principal threat to France's further progress. "The risk is to fall into self-satisfaction," Lièvremont said. "In the last three years, we've beaten Wales three times. But as soon as you start thinking about that, you're starting to lose this match."

Any lingering shreds of complacency will probably not survive the first shuddering collision between the Welsh No12 and the French No13, the sort of confrontation on which a passage to the final may depend.

France Médard; Clerc, Rougerie, Mermoz, Palisson; Parra, Yachvili; Poux, Servat, Mas, Papé, Nallet, Dusautoir (capt), Bonnaire, Harinordoquy. Replacements Szarzewski, Barcella, Pierre, Picamoles, Trinh-Duc, Marty, Heymans.