Six Nations/Wales v France: There has been much debate of late about the quality of Bernard Laporte's France as an attacking force, but one statistic should be borne in mind as they bid for their 15th title: two tries today at the Millennium Stadium would put them on a total of 18, more than they have managed in any other Six Nations.
The devil is in the detail, though: of France's 16 tries in four games to date, 10 have come from first-phase possession. As Ireland and England in particular can testify, Laporte's side have been utterly ruthless when it comes to profiting from the errors of their opponents: turnovers, interceptions, spilled ball, loose kicks.
An analysis of Les Bleus' championship published this week showed France have rarely scored through multiple phases of play. Armchair pundits can theorise on whether this is because they are unable to hold the ball for long, or if the opposition's capacity for bungling in the face of aggression means they do not need to. Thus far, it has worked.
For Wales this is worrying news, because the style of rugby they espouse under Scott Johnson is high-risk, high-return. An error count on the scale the defending champions totted up last weekend against Italy would hand France the title on a plate. A win should suffice for the French, unless Ireland beat England by more than 28 points.
Laporte called on his players to focus on two things. "The players will have to be irreproachable in their commitment," he said. "Forward passes, missing touch, that can happen, but commitment is what counts. And if we hit trouble we need strategic vision, not go on at 100 miles per hour on an empty tank."
Aware that in last year's game a 10-minute spell of inattention allowed Wales to stage one of the great comebacks to win 24-18, France will go to Cardiff looking to snuff out the home side. Their aggressive defence did the job against Ireland - just - and England, where the unlikely figure of Frederic Michalak was chosen to stick it to Charlie Hodgson along with the French backrow.
"We will have to smother them for the entire match," said their captain Fabien Pelous. "They put a lot of width into their game. We will have to manage two halves of what we did last year at the Stade de France for one half."
Much of France's week has been devoted to recuperation from a physical 80 minutes against the Red Rose XV that left Pieter de Villiers, Dimitri Yachvili and Damien Traille nursing bumps and caused their final training session to be cut to 35 minutes. The only change is in the backrow, where Julien Bonnaire replaces Olivier Magne, who pays for giving away four penalties against England. Even without Magne, the experience of Laporte's side is what catches the eye: nine of today's XV have more than 40 caps.
As well as anticipating that younger legs will run Laporte's side off their ageing feet, Wales may pin hopes on the fact that while their error count is high, according to the official statistics one team has made more mistakes in their last four games. That just happens to be France.
REPLACEMENTS
WALES: 16 Mefin Davies, 17 Gethin Jenkins, 18 Jonathan Thomas, 19 Dafydd Jones, 20 Andy Williams, 21 Nicky Robinson, 22 Gavin Henson.
FRANCE: 16 Dimitri Szarzewski, 17 Olivier Milloud, 18 Lionel Nallet, 19 Olivier Magne, 20 Jean-Baptiste Elissalde, 21 Ludovic Valbon, 22 Cedric Heymans.
