It has always seemed to me that rugby writers have some sort of responsability to make a prediction - or at least express a hope - for the outcome of specific matches and as a native of Belfast living in France I suppose that it’s my turn to stick my head above the parapet with regard to tonight’s match. I must warn you, however, that my ability to make correct rugby predictions is about the same as my abilitiy to predict the weather - not too good, to say the least.

Anyway here goes: Ireland to win by less than 10 points. There it’s said!

And why am I taking this controversial position? Well I’ve see the matches to date and have been thoroughly disappointed by the performance of both teams so far - France’s big win over Namibia included! Neither team, it seems to me, has played to it’s potential so far and this being the case the question is: Which team will make the step-up? France, floating on the deceptive bubble of the Namibian win or Ireland, thoroughly disgusted with themselves, and rightly so, for their performances against Namibia and Georgia.

A superior 1st-ten-minutes game plan will help, of course, but at this level I believe that winning matches is all to do with mindset. It’s all to do with desire. There really isn’t much to choose between the teams in terms of fitness, skill and ability. There are slight differences, of course, in abilities in the various departments - the French front row looks marginally stronger and the Irish back row seems better grooved - but overall I don’t see that there’s much to choose between them. Thus, it comes down to which team really wants/needs the victory more and I think that it’s Ireland.

Care to disagree?