France will be perfect preparation for South Africa and oddly also for Japan in Scotland’s final Rugby World Cup warm-up in Paris on Saturday night.
You get where Vern Cotter is coming from when he compares Le Quinze to the Springboks, but he thinks there’s plenty to focus on similarities to Scotland’s first opponents in their Rugby World Cup pool at Gloucester in 19 days’ time.
France have picked what looks a first-choice team and publicly spoken about their desire to run up a sizeable score against the Scots, who blood the three players they’ve not played so far in the warm-up campaign with a fourth, Josh Strauss, not qualified until the day after the tournament starts.
Sean Maitland (shoulder) and Tommy Seymour (back), both hors de combat so far, make their bows on Paris while Tim Swinson, brought in at the eleventh hour to the final 31, will surely see some on-field time off the bench.
Cotter has made some other slight adjustments, restoring Richie Gray to play alongside his brother, bringing John Hardie back to open side and replacing the injured Peter Horne with Matt Scott to the centre, but 10 of the players were part of Saturday’s encouraging tear-up of the Italians at BT Murrayfield.
“We’re using this as another opportunity,” said the coach. “I know they believe they are powerful enough to dominate us. They’ve announced they’d like to score a lot of points against us.
“We may have to be content, as we may be against South Africa and Samoa, to function with 40 per cent of ball and territory, to try and take limited opportunities. It might be that type of game. We’re interested to look at those things.”
But the focus was finally shifting, he added, to the Japanese.
“It’s our last 80 minutes to prepare for Japan, which is just a couple of weeks away, to prepare for things that didn’t go well against Italy and Ireland, and also some things that did, to try and confirm those.
“There’s things we’ve looking at the French do that the Japanese are likely to do. There’s a strong link between what we’re doing in this game as it takes us through to Japan.”
Cotter isn’t concerned about the French boasting about scoring points, despite believing as he does that they are contenders to win.
“They’ve been finalists three times and I think they’re better prepared this year than for a number of years,” he said. “Obviously the loser (second team) in their pool plays the All Blacks in the quarter-final, well you’d think that would happen.
“As much as I’m saying about them wanting to score points on us, their thoughts and their attitude doesn’t change our approach; we want something from this game. There’s a whole raft of things we need to improve on and we can’t take a step back from the things we’ve done well.
“Defensively we’ll get tested. They have a very strong scrum, a powerful lineout, there’s Fofana and Basteraud in the centre.
“We have to make sure we’re agile, mentally and physically. We need to start with a plan but at the same time be able to change it, because they’re a bit of a combination of Ireland and Italy, aren’t they? They can move the ball in space and are awkward in the tight situations.”
Maitland will probably play the full 80 minutes, given he has had no game time since January. Stuart Hogg was in a moonboot at the squad launch after suffering an ankle injury against Italy but both he and Horne (knee), who is another option to cover 15, should be fit again this time next week.
The coach also revealed that he told Jim Hamilton that his international career “wasn’t over”, but the veteran lock had made up his mind to retire.
“Jim had let he be known that it was perhaps an idea, although hadn’t spoken to us directly about it,” said Cotter. “He made a decision after the team announcement, he’d obviously thought long and carefully about it.
“He came and announced it to the coaching group on Monday, and respect to the man, he made it public the next day.
“I mentioned to him (that he might be needed in case of injuries) , that it wasn’t over, but he said he’d made his decision.”
Scotland team (vs France, Stade de France, Paris, Saturday ko 8.15 BST)
Scotland (vs France, Stade de France, Paris ko 8.15pm BST Saturday)
S Maitland (London Irish); T Seymour, M Bennett (both Glasgow), M Scott (Edinburgh), T Visser (Harlequins); F Russell (Glasgow), G Laidlaw (Gloucester, capt); A Dickinson, R Ford, WP Nel (all Edinburgh); J Gray (Glasgow), R Gray (Castres) ; R Wilson (Glasgow), J Hardie (unattached), D Denton (Edinburgh).
Replacements: F Brown, F Reid, J Welsh, T Swinson (all Glasgow), A Strokosch (Perpignan), S Hidalgo-Clyne (Edinburgh), D Weir, S Lamont (both Glasgow).