Frances hopes of retaining the Grand Slam remain intact even though they have failed to impress in their opening two matches in this years RBS 6 Nations.

Their 16-9 triumph against Scotland at the Stade de France was consistent with their poor performances in the autumn internationals, when they lost to New Zealand and Argentina.

Even the plucky 18-17 win against the world champions at Twickenham failed to silence the critics.

Despite the victory over England, Laporte has wielded the axe for the clash with Wales on February 26, making four changes to his squad - but he does feel his side are starting to turn the corner.

It was good to play well at Twickenham, he said. This is a good sign that we are building a team gradually, even though we are not the best in the world.

The players have not lost their soul - the French team still has a soul.

Laporte, however, admits there is still a lot of work to do if his side are to remain consistent in all areas of the game.

When we travelled to England, our objectives were to be efficient in the line-out and in the scrum, and thats what we did.

But the two tries we conceded in the first half were caused by individual mistakes.

We have work to do on our attack and our defence. We were not combative enough on Sunday.