English prepare for Six Nations showdown

By CHRIS HEWETT

England have reached a number of conclusions about the opponents they will face in Paris on Sunday morning, none of which they are particularly keen to share with the public ahead of the event.

They consider Imanol Harinordoquy, the Basque No 8 armed with a well-developed dislike for all things English, to be a loudmouth who talks a better game than he plays; they see Dimitri Yachvili, the goal-kicking halfback from Biarritz, as a weak link to be snapped asunder at the first available opportunity; and they view Christophe Dominici, the temperamental wing from Stade Francais, as an accident waiting to happen.

Should they turn out to be right on all three counts, they will certainly deny the French the Grand Slam they crave and may well secure themselves a fourth Six Nations title in five years. Yachvili, present in the Tricolores' starting line-up only because of the injury problems affecting the outstanding Jean-Baptiste Elissalde, is an obvious target - not even Lawrence Dallaglio, a master of the non-committal response, could deny that much, despite his attempts at diplomacy.

Harinordoquy and Dominici are different kettles of poissons, being frequent match-winners as well as occasional match-losers. But both suffered an off-day the last time they faced England, and that is what counts right now.

Dallaglio, four matches into his second spell as England's captain, does not have the best of records in Paris - three championship appearances, one victory - but he has a very clear idea of how France can be beaten this weekend. This idea is based on the events of four months ago, when the two countries met on neutral territory in Sydney in the semifinal of the World Cup. It was here that Harinordoquy's reputation as a lavishly-gifted athlete with flypaper hands suffered so many dents that he might have spent the night contesting a demolition derby. It was here that Dominici hacked down Jason Robinson with a tackle straight out of the "Norman Hunter Yearbook for Trainee Leg-Breakers" and failed to reappear after 10 minutes of well-earned penance in the sin-bin.

England sensed a fragility about the French - a fragility of mood rather than muscle, but a weakness all the same. They reached into the very core of the French team and squeezed every pip they could find, with Dallaglio the squeezer-in-chief.

Keen to draw a thick black line under the defeat by Ireland at Twickenham this month and re-establish England's credentials as the pre-eminent team in the world game, Dallaglio is ready to perform a similar role this time.

"France have played some great rugby in this championship," conceded the No 8. "But then, they have been allowed to play great rugby.

"I mean no disrespect to the sides they have faced thus far, but they have spent virtually all their time on the front foot, for the simple reason that no one has found a way of forcing them on to the back foot. They have not been under serious pressure at any point, as far as I can see, and if teams fail to apply pressure when they're playing the French, they generally land in a heap of trouble.

"The last time France found themselves in the kind of pressure environment I'm talking about was the last time they played us, and we all know what happened in that semifinal. We built our score steadily and with great discipline - sure, Jonny Wilkinson kicked all our points, but in a knock-out situation you settle for what you can get - and once we hit the front, we refused to let them back into the contest. We knew 15 or 20 minutes from the end that they were gone, that there was no way they could recover.

"To a large extent, our problems since the World Cup have been in this area - our habit of opening up an advantage and then allowing opponents to come back at us very quickly. We now find ourselves in a situation where anything less than an 80-minute performance will be insufficient. If we do not keep the scoreboard moving, if we allow our concentration to slip for periods of time, we will suffer for it. Fortunately, I detect the kind of mood we all sensed during the build-up to the semifinal."

In Sydney, England struck mighty blows at the most molten point of the forward struggle - in the scrum, the spiritual centrepiece of the French game. Jean-Jacques Crenca, the fearsome prop from Agen, failed to last the match, and the sight of him retreating to the bench was one of the sights that convinced the English of their destiny. This weekend, the French front row will pose a different challenge; the multi-dimensional Pieter de Villiers is back in circulation, with Sylvain Marconnet in his optimum position on the loosehead. Dallaglio believes the game will be won and lost in this department.

"If I remember correctly, the lineouts were pretty even in the semifinal - we stole five of theirs, they nicked five of ours. However, the scrum was good news for us. I had my share of problems because Fabien Galthie was all over me at the base of the set-piece, but we gave them more grief than they gave us. By disrupting them as we did, we stopped Harinordoquy finding a way into the game."

Galthie is not around any more; instead, they have Yachvili, an undeniable talent but not yet a dependable one. Pressed on whether England would prey on the newcomer with the aim of forcing him into those errors to which he is most prone - hare-brained kicking and the odd "Dambusters" pass, which bounces along the floor leaving mayhem in its wake - Dallaglio refused to be drawn. He did, however, euphemistically acknowledge that England's halfback, the vastly more experienced Matt Dawson, was "looking forward to the challenge of playing against him".

Just as the captain himself is relishing the challenge of another 80 minutes of exposure at the summit of European rugby.

"They're probably thinking more about the semifinal defeat than about the Grand Slam they're chasing.

"And that is because they know we'll ask them questions they weren't asked in the first four rounds of the tournament. It will be interesting, I reckon. Very interesting."

- INDEPENDENT

* In the other matches Ireland host Scotland in a bid to win their first Triple Crown since 1985 and Wales play Italy in Cardiff.