POOL A SAMOA v TONGA Montpellier, 3.00 Live, Setanta Ireland Samoa disappointed us last week with their display against South Africa, although admittedly they weren't helped by the one-eyed refereeing performance of Paul Honiss. It was almost as though they played with too much structure against the Boks but hopefully they'll feel they can go out and fling the ball around a bit this afternoon against their near neighbours. Needless to say, there'll be a few heavy hits in this one, but the fact that Samoa have the better side on paper and have also had the benefit of three days extra rest over Tonga should see them home reasonably comfortably.

POOL D FRANCE v NAMIBIA Toulouse, 8.00 Live, Setanta Ireland This game has been built up all week as some kind of cathartic session for France, with the entire nation expecting them to get their World Cup campaign back on track pretty emphatically. Bernard Laporte has been quite clever in naming eight players from the hometown club in his starting line-up, which should at least ensure that they have the crowd behind them. They'll want a big score and with the amount of attacking quality contained in the side, we don't doubt for a second that they'll pile on the points.