Silent treatment when getting into the zone is all that matters

SATURDAY evening at base camp. Nobody here 'cept us donkeys. No wives or girlfriends, no friends or supporters; they've departed. They've left us to it; alone with our thoughts and our funny little moods.

I don't really want to talk to anybody. Not now and certainly not tomorrow. I don't want to be rude or anything but I go quiet on game day. I can feel myself going that way already. I'm drifting off into my own private place. By tomorrow, I'll be there. Cool and calm and focused on what I've got to do. That's the plan anyway.

Leann will call in the morning and the conversation will be brief. She knows the drill. We met at school. We're childhood sweethearts if you like. She's been with me for every one of my 48 caps and there isn't another person alive who knows me better.

It'll be: "Hi Nath, it's me."

"Hiya."

"Good luck today, okay?"

"Thanks."

"See you after."

"Yeah, see you after."

After, I'll be fine. We go back to normal then. But this is what I do on the day of a game. Everybody's different. Stick your head in the door of our dressing room at about 2.45pm – actually, best not – and you'll see it all, from excitement to fear, from smiles to tears, from a deep sense of calm to an overwhelming desire to be sick. Normally, I'm one of the calm ones. I don't do much. I just sit there, thinking.

Thinking about my jobs: the first ruck, the first tackle, the first scrum, the first lineout. Statements. Messages that tell the French that every inch of ground they gain is going to be hard-won.

I'll be thinking of Lionel Nallet, their captain and the man I'll probably be jumping against in the lineout. A tough boy, Nallet. Solid. Knows what he's about. In the papers during the week they wrote that Nallet will be secure on his own ball. Uppermost in my mind will be the desire to make him a lot more insecure than the writers believe.

My coach at Perpignan took a while to understand my quiet psyche. The way I look at it is this: If I've done the work then I'm at ease. If I'm comfortable with the gameplan, if I know exactly what I'm supposed to do then there's a calmness that comes with that. Not for everybody, but for me.

We have, for instance, a number of Argentinians in our team and they are the most passionate rugby players in the entire world. They cry when they get up in the morning, they cry at breakfast – "No muesli! Boo-hoo!" – they cry on the way to the ground and, my God, how they cry when the anthems strike up. They are champion weepers. Combine them with a few frenzied Frenchmen in our dressing room and you have a heady brew.

The coach couldn't figure out why I wasn't like that, why I wasn't crying or hopping off walls or slapping people. Now he knows. I'd rather chill.

But you can only do that for so long. Sooner or later, the emotion gets you. I can tell you how it's going to be. I can already predict what those last few minutes before kick-off are going to be like.

The call will come for us to walk to the tunnel and that's when the enormity of the occasion starts to batter down my emotional defences. We gather in the tunnel, waiting for the nod.

Now the heart is beating faster. The doors at the far end open up and the noise whooshes in and gives you a shake. Our entry music begins. The pipes of Highland Cathedral stir the soul. We start to walk. You can't believe the sense of anticipation at this point.

Five minutes earlier I was nice and relaxed. Now I've got a battle on my hands to keep myself together.

And there's the anthems to face. That's when the last walls of resistance come crashing down and the tears come in. I cry every time I sing Flower of Scotland.

Sure, I wasn't born here. I'm from Wagga Wagga and spent the first 21 years of my life in Australia. This country has been so good to me, though. Myself and Leann came here initially for six months and ended up staying seven years.

We lived in Gala for four years and met some fantastic people. We moved to Edinburgh and met more fantastic people. We've almost become detached from the friends we had in Australia we've been gone so long. We've got more friends over here than we do down there. It's these people I think about during the anthem. I know what days like today mean to them all.

There's pressure on us to beat France. Not just to perform, not just to play well and push them close. To win. That's a new pressure. We haven't had that much before but we think we now have the ability and depth in the squad to cope with it. I know France have some brilliant players, some real prospects who may not be well known here but who, I can assure you, are the real deal.

But I think of the guys we've got and I'm happy. I think of the size of our pack, our class at half-back and our dynamic runners behind them and I'm excited. I'd be a fool to say boldly we're going to win. But I'd be a liar if I said we didn't have a very big chance. For now, it's time to sleep on it. And to enter the zone.

Lots of questions to be answered on the pitch

THREE things I'm looking forward to...

1. Seeing if my Perpignan team-mate, David Marty, can cope with the pace and step and strength of my new Scotland team-mate, Nick De Luca. They're playing opposite each other. Marty (Za Za as he is known) is a very, very direct player but Nick looks a real class act to me.

2. Seeing if Francois Trinh-Duc, the 21-year-old Montpellier flier, can overcome the attentions of John Barclay, the 21-year-old Glasgow openside. Trinh-Duc scored a try against Perpignan at the start of the year where he beat five would-be tacklers and he did the same against Clermont-Auvergne. Given John's outrageously good tackle stats in his one Test so far – against the All Blacks – I have high hopes we can stop the French tyro.

3. Seeing the referee signal for the first scrum. Lionel Faure and Julien Brugnaut are debutant props for France and since they're keeping my mate, Nicolas Mas, out of the team, they must be bloody good. The word is that they think they can take us up front. That first scrum will be absolutely fascinating. I'll let our front-row worry about the technique. I'll just push like hell.

New look has led to rise of beardism

YOU'VE heard of racism and ageism and, er, a few other isms. Well, after the slagging I've had this week I can add another to the mix. Beardism.

Scottish rugby players are afflicted by this in a very serious way judging by the reaction to my new, hairy, look. I've been branded a caveman, a Chabal wannabe, a hobo, a double of Happy Gilmore's caddy.... The other day I heard somebody at Murrayfield – Simon Cross, I think it was you – wonder aloud: "Hey, who's the homeless guy?" Charming.