Pool D/France v Ireland:Graham Steadman was having none of it. In his north of England drawl, the defensive coach to the Irish team stretched his rather developed biceps and told us like it was. He sat at the top table like a lump of unflinching Yorkshire Dale. There is a certainty about his voice, a quality with which Ireland will be looking to lace their game this week.

"Different challenges, different questions are going to be asked," said Steadman. "The way in which the guys have trained today, if they replicate what they've done in training this week, and I'm not being over-confident here, there could be a surprise on the cards."

Unafraid to up the ante, this week has been one of the coaches and the players reinforcing the basic messages - we are good enough. We are strong enough. We can win. We are not as bad as we have looked.

"If you look at the tries we've conceded, one was from an unfortunate drop-out where we were caught out of shape on the fringes of John (Hayes) and Marcus (Horan), and the Namibians exploited that well," continued Steadman.

"The other was a speculative kick down our right touchline. They showed a little more urgency and they scored off the back of their inside centre. Then you've got the right centre popping up in midfield off a pass from midfield, which they (Georgia) have intercepted and run 70 metres.

"As Niall (O'Donovan) has said, the confidence which has grown within the squad from that has put them in good stead against France. We know it's going to be a big challenge, but we're more than capable of closing them out."

In a week fraught with off-pitch controversy and a media that has become increasingly impatient in their dealing with the Irish team and management, Steadman and O'Donovan were eager to bring everything back to the pitch.

The fact that French captain Raphael Ibanez has passed a fitness test is significant as is the figure of Sebastien Chabal starting in the secondrow.

The view from the three amigos, Steadman, O'Donovan and Brian McLaughlin (skills coach) is that last time the two sides met in Croke Park earlier this year, Ireland lost the match in the first half and not as we all remember it, on the bounce of a ball in the dying seconds.

Looking to the last time Ireland won in France in 2000 is also facile.

"To go back seven years would probably be wrong," says O'Donovan." What we need to do and what guys are doing is to look at very up-to-date French sides, looking at themselves. We need to go back to the Six Nations this year to see how we lost the game not at the end but in the first 20 minutes. That's an important thing.

"We had a very slow start against them (in Croke Park). In the first 20 minutes it was all France. I'd say for 90 per cent of that first 20 minutes France had the ball and were putting us under pressure.

"We were putting a lot of tackles in, defending until we got to grips with the game.

"We got into it, and then we took the lead. You could say the try at the end cost us the game, but we mightn't have been in that position if we had got a better start."

With Chabal starting and Serge Betson coming into the French side, coach Bernard Laporte may well see Ireland as being soft in the opening exchanges. The four changes he has made since their last match against Namibia have been to the pack.

"The platform's going to be laid by the forwards, and with the selection of their forwards, they're going to look to steamroll us," says Steadman lugubriously.

"I think Chabal's biggest threat is when he comes off the bench as an impact player, fresh into the last quarter of the match. The fact that he's starting, we're going to have to make first impressions count against him, and stop him from getting a head of steam, and stopping the crowd getting behind him."

There was similar talk before Namibia and Georgia.

Ireland's bark can be heard again but it is their bite we wait for.