France host England at the Stade de France, Paris on Sunday 11 March in the RBS Six Nations Championship, with kick-off at 1500 GMT and live on BBC One.
England will be looking to continue their improvement curve and go one better than the loss to Wales. France will be looking for a much improved performance than the first half against Ireland. France having played last week and fielding an unchanged pack could feel the effects of the short turn-round. England will be looking to stand-up to the French pack. Whatever the outcome the weather should not have any impact as it is set fair.
For England Lancaster has stayed true to the team that ran out against Wales and also has no room on the bench for the Leicester 10 Toby Flood. He has also kept faith with Ashton. Matt Stevens has also been retained although we feel there are better candidates to come off the bench.
For France Coach Philippe Saint-Andre has brought in Julien Dupuy at scrum-half and Lionel Beauxis at fly-half, moving Parra and Trinh-Duc to the bench. There is still no place for Yachvilli who starred for Biarritz last weekend. The selection would appear to mean that France will look to kick the corners rather than run at England. This could back-fire if Ashton, Foden and Strettle can produce their fireworks of old. Whatever we expect a close contest.
Teams
France: 15 Clement Poitrenaud, 14 Vincent Clerc, 13 Aurelien Rougerie, 12 Wesley Fofana, 11 Julien Malzieu, 10 Lionel Beauxis, 9 Julien Dupuy, 1 Jean-Baptiste Poux, 2 Dimitri Szarzewski, 3 Nicolas Mas, 4 Pascal Pape, 5 Yoann Maestri, 6 Thierry Dusautoir (C), 7 Julien Bonnaire, 8 Imanol Harinordoquy.
Replacements: 16 William Servat, 17 Vincent Debaty, 18 Lionel Nallet, 19 Louis Picamoles, 20 Morgan Parra, 21 Francois Trinh-Duc, 22 Maxime Mermoz
England: 15 Ben Foden, 14 Chris Ashton, 13 Manu Tuilagi, 12 Brad Barritt, 11 David Strettle, 10 Owen Farrell, 9 Lee Dickson, 1 Alex Corbisiero, 2 Dylan Hartley, 3 Dan Cole, 4 Mouritz Botha, 5 Geoff Parling, 6 Tom Croft, 7 Chris Robshaw (C), 8 Ben Morgan
Replacements: 16 Rob Webber, 17 Matt Stevens, 18 Tom Palmer, 19 Phil Dowson, 20 Ben Youngs, 21 Charlie Hodgson, 22 Mike Brown
Officials
Referee: Alain Rolland (Ireland)
Touch judges: Nigel Owens (Wales), John Lacey (Ireland)
TV: Jim Yuille (Scotland)