France name unchanged side but tensions remain

Facing criticism from all quarters about the quality of his team's play during the tournament, in which they lost pool matches to the All Blacks and Tonga before beating Wales' 14 men by only a single point in the semi-final, without getting close to scoring a try, Lievremont declared: "If we have to win this match playing as we did against Wales, we'll do so."

Next question: would such a performance be enough to reverse the pool defeat against the All Blacks? "Certainly not," he replied.Like his team, Lievremont is a mass of contradictions. On Wednesday he backtracked on his widely publicised criticisms of the players the day after the semi-final, when he described them as "spoilt brats" after a group of about half a dozen had defied his instructions not to go out and celebrate their narrow victory."I said those things in order to put pressure on them," he said, "but when I read my comments in the newspapers, I realised that I should probably have kept quiet."