Dubai Telegraph - Scotland's Dempsey eager to ruin French Six Nations party

Any kind of win for France over Scotland, in what is the final match of three on the tournament's concluding 'Super Saturday', should be enough to secure Les Bleus' first Six Nations title in three years given their current +86 points difference advantage over second-place England.

Scotland, already beaten by Ireland and England this season, are effectively out of title contention, having last been crowned champions when they won the final edition of the old Five Nations in 1999.

Scotland will go into Saturday's clash at the Stade de France as huge underdogs given how France ended double-defending champions Ireland's hopes of a Grand Slam with a dominant 42-27 victory in Dublin last weekend.

But a defiant Dempsey said Wednesday: "Me personally, I don't really care about any of that. That's for them. They (France) deserve to be in a position to be excited for their team who are playing for the Six Nations."

The Australia-born 30-year-old added: "Two years ago when we played there (in a match Scotland lost 32-21), 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."

- '80-minute performance' -

Scotland have won just once away to France this century, behind closed doors in 2021 when spectators were barred from attending because of the coronavirus outbreak.

The Scots go into Saturday's match keen to finish the championship with a flourish after they faded badly in the final quarter last weekend before seeing off winless Wales 35-29 at Murrayfield.

"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 (minutes)."

He added: "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."

G.Gopinath--DT