'We know what’s coming and we’ve dealt with it before': Jack Dempsey

Scotland back-rower Jack Dempsey is unfazed by the prospect of trying to tame rampant France and “upset their party” amid what promises to be a raucous atmosphere in Paris on Saturday night.

Les Bleus will claim their first Guinness Six Nations title in three years – and only their second championship triumph since 2010 – if they defeat the Scots at Stade de France.

Despite Gregor Townsend’s side being out of title contention and cast as underdogs, Dempsey is adamant he will not be cowed by the frenzy that awaits his side in the 80,000-capacity bowl in Saint-Denis.

“Me personally, I don’t really care about any of that,” said the Australia-born 30-year-old. “That’s for them. They deserve to be in a position to be excited for their team who are playing for the Six Nations.

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“Two years ago when we played there, that was my first time playing against France in the Six Nations and that time I would answer the question, ‘wow, what an achievement, what a special place to play’.

“You see all the pageantry and the flags and the songs and it is a really good place to play.

“But we’re going there against the favourites to try and upset their party. And that’s the hardest thing to do right now. But we’re not too worried about what the external is. We just want to focus on ourselves.”

Scotland have won only once in France this century, behind closed doors in 2021.

In their last Six Nations visit to Paris, they ran Les Bleus close in February 2023 before going down 32-21 and then produced a similarly-spirited display in a 30-27 defeat in Saint-Etienne just before the World Cup later that year.

Having won just two of their four matches in this year’s underwhelming championship so far, the Scots are intent on finishing on a high after a final-quarter drop-off took the shine off last weekend’s 35-29 home win over struggling Wales.

“We’ve played France enough now, we’ve played them a couple of times in the lead-up to the World Cup, so we’ve had a good sample size against this squad where we don’t need to make up a new game plan or anything like that,” said Dempsey.

“It’s not like we’ve never seen them before. We know what’s coming and we’ve dealt with it before. But it’s about making sure we show up for the 80.

“I don’t take confidence from ‘couldas and wouldas, closes and maybes’. In terms of knowing what we’re coming up against, it makes it easier to prep for them. Our focus though is about ourselves, as it has been this whole campaign, because we haven’t put on that 80 yet.

“If we look at this time last year, we came back from Rome after losing a game that we should have won. And then we went to Dublin to an Ireland team that were playing to win the title – just like France are doing this week – and we put in our best defensive performance of the campaign.

“So stuff like that gives me confidence, that I know the boys in this squad will always bounce back after disappointment.

“We should be sitting here celebrating a pretty fantastic win against Wales, where we did all this really nice stuff but we just let them back in and robbed ourselves of that winning feeling.

“But we’ve got the role now of kind of party poopers, or whatever you want to call it, where no one backs us to win and we need to put on an 80-minute performance.”