Paul O’Connell uses all the evasion skills of a winger to avoid All Blacks quarter final question

Of course, no-one from the Irish or French squad will tell you they want to avoid New Zealand in the last eight.

New Zealand guaranteed themselves top spot of Pool C, last night, with their 47-9 victory over Tonga. Now, Ireland and France know who they will face if they fall short in their Millennium Stadium clash. France prop Eddy Ben Arous declared, midweek, that his team are solely focused on beating Ireland to continue their winning momentum. He insisted that they have not thought of New Zealand once. Harmless hokum but we'll leave him to it. This afternoon, Paul O'Connell followed the Frenchman's lead. "By winning against France tomorrow," asked a Gallic journalist, "you will avoid New Zealand in the quarter finals. Is that what you are thinking now?" O'Connell responded, "That's not what I'm thinking now.

"This match is too close to think of anything beyond that. "It has been a philosophy of ours from day one and everyone in here [at the press briefing] can probably put their pens down because I'll say the exact same thing I say in every press conference - we don't gt too far ahead of ourselves. "It is a philosophy that Joe Schmidt and Jason Cowman, our strength and conditioning coach, preach a lot. "The big focus for us is the start of the game. Everything else beyond that is irrelevant really. We'll deal with that when it comes."

O'Connell also remarked upon suggestions that Ireland may have been holding back plays for the French. "Unless I'm not involved in them, we haven't been keeping anything up our sleeve."