IT’S the classic rugby question I know, but which French team will turn up when Wales arrive at the Stade de France on Saturday night?

It is never more relevant than right now because they are on the back of an embarrassing first defeat at the hands of Italy and the players have been absolutely slammed by their own coach Marc Lievremont.

He appears to be getting ever more eccentric by the day, and after the shock defeat by the Azzurri he accused his own team of cowardice, of disloyalty and indicated many would never wear the French jersey again.

And he followed up, as good as his word, by omitting half-a-dozen leading players from the squad to face Wales, Sebastian Chabal, Yannick Jauzion and Sylvain Marconnet among them.

How on earth will the players he does pick - and some of them will remain from the Italian disaster -react to that?

The coach could well have lost the dressing room whatever team he selects after an outburst like that in which case the players simply won’t play for him.

Or they will be stung by his criticism and respond, worryingly for Wales, as they can by playing the sublime rugby of which only French sides are capable.

Or again they may just play for themselves, for sheer pride in their own performance, largely ignoring Lievremont which will also be a concern from a Welsh point of view.

But, to coin another phrase, Wales can only play what’s in front of them and they’ll have to get on with the job at hand whatever.

Either way this game now has a real sense of intrigue about it in the sense that everyone will be full of anticipation about what kind of performance France will produce after their setback against Italy and the emotive words used by their coach in the aftermath.

Certainly few who witnessed the immediate after-match scenes at the Stadio Flaminio can’t fail to have been moved, coach Nick Mallett doing a dance of delight, hugging all his players, many of whom were crying.

A real tear jerker it was, though much of it was denied to the gathering in the WRU media room who had just exploded with loud cheers of delight at the result only to have the pictures from Rome turned off and instead switched to previous Wales-Ireland encounters. Whoever was responsible for that has no soul!

Back to the practicalities, though, and Wales coach Warren Gatland has delayed announcing the team for 24 hours until Wednesday, almost certainly to assess the fitness of top prop Adam Jones because Craig Mitchell won’t be available after damaging his elbow early in the Ireland game.

It could be a gamble going for Jones as he’s only had 20 minutes of rugby with the Ospreys since returning from a lengthy lay-off himself, but on the other hand the cupboard is pretty bare.

Wales still have an outside chance of taking the title, now in second place in the table on their own, but it’s a real outside bet because they would have to win in France by around 25 points and hope Ireland beat Grand Slam chasing England by about 20 points. Some chance!

Nevertheless, Wales are now on the back of three successive wins which represents quite a turnaround from going eight games without a victory.

But one thing for sure, if Wales persist in kicking the ball as much as they did against Ireland they will be asking for trouble because no-one counter-attacks quite like the French.

It appeared James Hook & Co were playing to orders against the Irish, but it was back to the aerial ping-pong of last season and though Wales may be on a roll the overriding impression is that they won’t live with the southern hemisphere superpowers come the World Cup in September.

They won’t have that fantastic Millennium Stadium crowd behind them then either. If ever a crowd lifted a team it was on Saturday in those closing minutes when they foolishly tried to run the clock down too early and Ireland staged a fierce final onslaught.

The atmosphere in the stadium as the fans, to a man and woman, were on their feet amid a wall of sound urging Wales to hold the line, was absolutely electric. Stirring stuff!