Wales will be the first team this season to test France's away form in the Six Nations championship at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium on Sunday.
So far the organizers' decision to alter the traditional match schedule so that France against England in Paris on March 27 is the final, Grand Slam deciding, match of the championship appears justified as they are the only sides in the tournament to have won their opening two matches.
However, France's victories over Ireland and Italy have both been achieved in Paris.
France captain Fabien Pelous was confident his team would rise to the Cardiff challenge.
"We have the means to outclass any team in the world if we play our own game," he told reporters at the team's training base at Marcoussis, south of Paris, on Thursday.
"We can better any team in the world if we take the trouble to do it," the 30-year-old second-row added.
Pelous and his team mates in the French pack will have noted how Ireland went about beating Wales 36-15 in Dublin last month, a match where the visitors were a huge 24-3 down at half-time.
The Irish rendered Wales's gifted back division all but irrelevant by starving them of ball, the home pack comprehensively outmuscling Wales's forwards who appeared to have no answer to the rolling maul.
Wales coach Steve Hansen has responded by making three changes to the scrum with captain Colin Charvis, fit again after a finger injury, returning to the back-row, Michael Owen back at lock and Gethin Jenkins in for injured prop Adam Jones.
Meanwhile France coach Bernard Laporte has dropped flanker Olivier Magne and brought in Thomas Lievremont into his back-row following France's 25-0 win over Italy -- a match where a lack of French ruthlessness prevented an even more emphatic scoreline.
For many the sight of wing Christophe Dominici carelessly squandering a try by dropping the ball when safely over the line and without an Italy defender in sight, summed up all the cherished sterotypes associated with French rugby.
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