France: 15 Brice Dulin, 14 Yoann Huget, 13 Mathieu Bastareaud, 12 Gaël Fickou , 11 Maxime Médard, 10 Remi Tálès, 9 Maxime Machenaud, 8 Damien Chouly, 7 Alexandre Lapandry, 6 Louis Picamoles, 5 Yoann Maestri, 4 Pascal Papé, 3 Nicolas Mas, 2 Dimitri Szarzewski, 1 Thomas Domingo
Replacements:16 Guilhem Guirado, 17 Vincent Debaty, 18 Rabah Slimani, 19 Alexandre Flanquart, 20 Sébastien Vahaamahina, 21 Wenceslas Lauret, 22 Jean-Marc Doussain, 23 Maxime Mermoz
Kayser is out at hooker. Picamoles is playing 6; 7 and 8 are 3rd/4th choices - 9 and 10 aren't 1st choice. Médard is a filler at wing, he shines at FB, we've got at least 4 maybe 5 guys ahead of him. Our centers are fillers.
On the bench, hooker Guirado is a filler, Flanquart shouldn't be there and Mermoz is a filler at 23.
Calling this a B team is a fair assessment and couldn't be categorically rejected. Yet somehow there's still quality per se on paper there.
A few things about all that:
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the scrum:
it seems since Kayser left after the England game our scrum has lost stability. He gave us weight at the middle of the front row we don't get with Szar (although he's better all-around). We've been erratic there.
With Walsh refereeing this one, we better adapt to SH interpretation unlike what we did in Murrayfield, stubborn to get penalties when we should have played ball.
Mas had this to say since the rule change (impact):
"It's been 15 years I've been doing the same thing, and now they're changing it all", complains
Nicolas Mas (33 yo, 70 caps). "
It's hard to take position. It's like a kid you change his way of doing things. There's an adaptation to be made to the new rules, the refereeing, continues the Montpelliérain.
But it's our job."
Or Thomas Domingo:
"The ref has asked us to change our grips/support. It's destabilizing, confusing."
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the half-back pairing:
I think this is yet another new one, could it be, the twelveth since PSA ? Machenaud-Talès. It really should've been Parra-FTD, nothing to lose, but no. Talès handed a difficult task almost straight out of the blue, and our *penalty kicker* will be Machenaud !...
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center combination: it's Fickou's first start for a real big test in Bleus. He's still very young, and I find it gutsy the staff would try him out. But it's not like France plays with any chemistry, so put anyone 2 centers there, they'll play on an island of their own the whole match anyways.
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third row:
* Lapandry (1m95, 101kg) did look good in Scotland, and despite lacking a bit in weight for a guy his height and for a flanker, he's actually played well. 12 tackles, 0 miss. 0 turnover. Won a ball himself at the bdown. Ran a bit. Won 2 lineouts.
* Chouly is alright but he won't make a World XV any time soon. Also a perfect tackler (9/0) in MF but he caused 2 TO.
* Apparently, PSA has a "plan" for the Picamoles-Chouly combination. He said there will be "alerternance" between the two, but couldn't say more about that "plan". Mmmmyeah...
I thought it was very important to include mass and power at the breakdown against a beastial Irish side that will be hungrier than ever on Saturday. Le Roux was back from injury and would've been big....why the fk ??
Overall some pretty bad choices, even given the very limited options available. Especially at 6-7-8-9-10.
... having read all of the said thread, I now have a better understanding of how other think about the strengths and weaknesses of the Top 14, and don't really want to spark another discussion on the topic ... I wish I'd read that thread before posting 
