THE fact that there are no voluntary changes to the Scotland team for today’s game against France comes as no surprise given how well they played against Ireland. Ryan Wilson, who misses out because of an elbow infection, will be missed, but John Barclay is an able deputy and has skills that are exactly suited to what his team need to do today.

Barclay is one of many fetchers in the team, and that is precisely where Scotland can get a critical edge over a French team who will be bigger, but I expect to be slower. If we can get on top in that area of the game, with Hamish Watson having a vital role to play as well and John Hardie ready to come off the bench, it will give us a massive advantage.

Watson has been a revelation since he came into the team, playing every minute of the three Autumn Tests. Hardie, who is back after injury, will be pushing hard for a starting place in the remaining Six Nations matches, and that competition should spur Watson to keep on improving. If those two, Barclay and others all play their part on the ground, that will put pressure on France to throw numbers into the breakdown - and that, in turn, will give our outside backs more space in which to operate.

Or at least it will if we can get quick, quality ball. If we can do that and keep France on the back foot, it will deny them the chance to get their big runners into the game, which is obviously something they want to do as much as possible.

We do not want to defend for as long as we did against Ireland. We do not want to be forced to make nearly as many tackles. We’re right to marvel at the tackle count of players like Jonny Gray, but I’d far rather see them carrying the ball at the opposition.

Scotland deserved to win against Ireland, but it was a close thing. We took our chances, they didn’t, and in the end it came down to a couple of kicks from Greig Laidlaw. The way the team took their chances to score those three first-half tries was excellent, and it would be great to see something similar this afternoon, but if we are on the back foot for as long as we were eight days ago, France may well take more chances than Ireland did.

There has been some talk this week about the need to start well and either silence the home crowd or get them turning against their own team, but the fact is that the last two times we won in Paris, we conceded early scores. I was playing in 1995, and on the bench in ‘99, and I remember the key thing on both occasions was that despite letting in a try in the first couple of minutes we stuck to our guns. We believed in ourselves and in our game plan, and we went out and played it.

This team reminds me a lot of those two sides in the sense that there is a real self-belief there now, which was not there before as it should have been. There is confidence, but not arrogance.

The squad consists of a good set of players, of the right age. The bulk of them have now accumulated a reasonable number of caps, and they are all maturing at the right time.

I worry slightly about our front row, but thankfully the problem early on against Ireland did not cost us too badly. And anyway, that is possibly the only area of the Scotland team that merits concern.

There is no way we should underestimate the French, who made quite a few mistakes against England at Twickenham but still only lost by three points, but this Scotland side is capable of making another big step forward and winning today. They need to truly believe that they can go out there and do it, and I think, as I said, that they have that belief now.

Vern Cotter’s plan seems to be to play a fast, expansive game, one which will move France’s big guys around. If we can do that and get the right quality of ball, our back three will be able to find some mismatches and really cause them problems.

Presuming that game plan does materialise, I expect this to be a high-scoring game. I expect Scotland to win it by four tries to three, with the final score being something like 28 or 30 points to 22.