'We're delighted to have Dupont back'

Karim Ghezal, assistant coach

On Antoine Dupont's comeback to the squad:

"We're very happy to have him back with us, that's the first very positive point. What's also important is that the 33 players who started this World Cup are still here after almost a month of competition. That's positive, and Antoine is one of them, so I'm delighted to have seen him again this morning."

"Antoine followed the protocol with the medical team, just as Paul (Boudehent) finished training with the medical team. Everyone has a protocol to follow, and we as coaches say to ourselves: 'This player can train at 100%, this one at 50, this player is fit or not', and then we get into match preparation mode.

"He's back, he did what he had to do today and tomorrow he'll follow his progression and move on like that. As a coach, I do what I'm told every day and I rely on medical advice.

"I'm a coach, so I also have a busy day. We schedule meetings, and at 8am this morning we had a meeting with the staff to prepare for the day, the morning's training session, the return, the gameplan, and the preparations for Italy, because it's a crucial match coming up." 

On Julien Marchand:

"Julien had a problem during the opening match. We were able to keep him on because we had the chance to get him back in shape. He's following the protocol. Julien was supposed to do 50% of the training session today, but given his progress, we decided not to let him do 50%. We're taking it day by day.

"He worked really well during the two days off, he's regained quite a bit of intensity, pace and acceleration. We're taking it day by day, and I'm waiting to see tomorrow (Monday) whether he'll do 50%. He's one of the 33 players we're lucky enough to have today."

On the match against Italy:

"There's no slacking off on our side. We know where we want to go and we've managed this period to get a bit physical. In terms of performance, many of the players have set speed records, so they're right where we want them to be.

"We won't be complacent against Italy, we'll be focused and concentrated. We know it's going to be a different game, rugby is a fighting sport. The Italians themselves said that they had been crushed by the All Blacks and I think that a team like that, having played and coached, will tighten up. We know that the Italian team we're going to play will be a different team to the one that played the All Blacks in Lyon."

Thomas Ramos, full-back

On Antoine Dupont:

"He's fine, he's smiling, he's been able to rest a bit after his operation. It's nice to have him back, but we also prepared ourselves all last week for the possibility that it might take him a little while to get back, so his return went quite smoothly.

"Of course Antoine is our captain and he is very influential in our game, but he hurt himself. We have two other quality scrum-halves [Maxime Lucu and Baptiste Couilloud] who are also waiting for their chance to express themselves. Last week, we said to ourselves that what had been our strength for the last four years was the group as a whole and the confidence we had in each of our players. The other two have our full confidence and we have no doubt that things will go well [if they have to play]."

Pierre Bourgarit, hooker

If he is already thinking about the quarter-final:

"Our first objective, after the win over Namibia, was to focus straight away on the match against Italy. Obviously there's the quarter-final in 15 days' time, but we know quite well that if we don't win on Friday we'll be going home. The whole group is aware of that, and we've been preparing for this match since last week. This morning there was a lot of freshness and enthusiasm, and that's also what's going to matter on Friday night."

On Italy, who gave France a tough time in the Six Nations, but who have just suffered a heavy defeat against New Zealand:

"It will be nothing like the opening match of the Six Nations six months ago. We hadn't played together for a while and we were punished a lot, whereas New Zealand did everything perfectly.

"We have no doubt that the Italians will have the temper and the will to wipe that out and what better way to do that than against the French team?"