France may have had their wings clipped by injuries but today they announced a side to play Ireland that sees their reformed bad boy Mathieu Bastareaud line up opposite the Ireland captain and record try scorer, Brian O'Driscoll, in Paris on Saturday.
Bastareaud, whose two tries in 19 minutes polished off Scotland in the opening round of the Six Nations, is unsurprisingly retained and what tinkering Marc Lièvremont has done is because of injuries to the wings who started at Murrayfield – Aurélien Rougerie and Benjamin Fall.
Vincent Clerc, the veteran from Toulouse, takes over from the right-wing Fall, having replaced Rougerie on the left for all but four minutes at Murrayfield, while Alexis Palisson of Brive takes the No11 shirt.
"For once we decided not to change a winning team with the exception, of course, of our two injured wings," said Lièvremont. "We only have a short week between the two games because we played Scotland on Sunday and we'll face Ireland on Saturday, and we could have brought fresh players in but we decided to bank on continuity.
"Playing Clerc from the start shouldn't cause a debate, [but] there was a lot of discussion on who to play on the left wing. We decided to go with the versatility and left foot of Palisson."
Julien Malzieu, the Clermont Auvergne wing and once a Lièvremont favourite, was called into the squad this week after France had lost both their wings, but it seems the coach is interested in a fresh back-three formation. "We know the qualities of Malzieu but it seemed interesting to us to have the presence of Alexis alongside Clément Poitrenaud."
"We went for Palisson because he often plays at full-back with his Brive club and is a fine left-footed field kicker. We think the Irish will kick a lot for territorial advantage and it will be interesting to use Alexis as a second full-back alongside Poitrenaud."
The only other French change is on the bench where Sylvain Marconnet takes over from Luc Ducalcon. "We were very happy with the performance of our forwards against Scotland and we felt all of them deserved to face the stronger challenge of the Irish pack," said Lièvremont.
The rehabilitation of Bastareaud seems complete following the apparent breakdown of the summer when he suggested he had been the victim of a racist attack during the tour of New Zealand to cover up the wounds suffered after a boozy night out in Wellington.
Today at the French base at Marcoussis, morning training ended with a brief contact session and the Stade Français centre repeatedly taking the ball into what will be O'Driscoll's area of the pitch.
France C Poitrenaud (Toulouse); V Clerc (Toulouse), M Bastareaud (Stade Français), Y Jauzion (Toulouse), A Palisson (Brive); F Trinh-Duc (Montpellier), M Parra (Clermont); T Domingo (Clermont), W Servat (Toulouse), N Mas (Perpignan), L Nallet (Racing Metro), P Pape (Stade Français), T Dusautoir (capt, Toulouse), F Ouedraogo (Montpellier), I Harinordoquy (Biarritz).
Replacements D Szarzewski (Stade Français), S Marconnet (Stade Français), J Pierre (Clermont), J Bonnaire (Clermont), F Michalak (Toulouse), D Marty (Perpignan), J Malzieu (Clermont).
