If there was a buzz about the French camp this week in the build-up to today's grand slam decider, it came from bees enjoying the unseasonable spring heat which has made Paris warmer than Provence this week. The Chateau Ricard at Clairefontaine, south of Paris, was not exactly besieged by the French media at the team's final press session on Thursday - the Easter holidays, Champions League and the presidential election saw to that.

The flanker Serge Betsen could be seen strolling the elegant grounds, fishing rod in hand; later, in a scene which is hard to imagine being enacted in the England camp two days before a grand slam decider, the captain Fabien Galthié dropped in on the informal baguette-and-bits buffet which the chateau hosted for the French press in honour of the team's last stay here. From November's internationals they will stay at the new national rugby centre in Linas, closer to Paris. Galthié was limping from a thigh injury which has stopped him training this week, but he did not look like a man under pressure as he posed for photographs.

On Monday the team asked for their win bonus to be doubled, but it was only an April fool. However, when the serious business begins today at the Stade de France the stakes will be high. Only six French teams have managed a grand slam - in 1968, '77, '81, '87, '97 and '98 - and only one of those, 1997, has been completed on French soil. In a longer-term perspective, as the World Cup looms, completing the championship clean sweep will take France's run of Test wins to eight, a figure passed only once, in the 1930s, and equal to their record in 1998.

Since his arrival in autumn 1999 the coach Bernard Laporte's mantra has been the need to find consistency, and eight successive Test wins including a grand slam would look close to that. It has been a dramatic transformation: a year ago France closed their championship with a drubbing at the hands of England. That followed a narrow defeat by Wales in spite of their superiority, and a scrambled, shapeless victory over Italy.

The turning point came during last June's tour of South Africa and New Zealand. During the 2001 Six Nations, says the manager Jo Maso, "there were some players living in a comfort zone, and we wanted to change that".

Two factors made the difference, says the prop Pieter de Villiers: "A lot of new players arrived, and we won the first match against South Africa. It meant we were starting to see some results after the hard work we had put in for a year or so. When you are starting something new it takes time. South Africa wasn't the start, but suddenly there was a hidden, humble confidence. We knew we could count on one another."

Laporte says that "a new spirit was born in adversity. The team bonded, centred itself around a core of mature players - Raphael Ibanez, Olivier Brouzet, Olivier Magne, Galthié. They formed a united front, won the first Test and almost won the second, a hell of a match in which they never buckled, because of the respect they had for each other."

This état d'esprit, the manager says, is what has made the difference in this championship. "I've always had teams which were strong on a human level, whether it was Bègles or Stade Français. The guys are all mates, they are homogenous, generous with each other, with no egos. If you see the end of the match against Wales, and the first 20 minutes against Scotland, when we suffered like dogs without giving away any points, that's what you can do if you're with people you like."

There is, he notes, a parallel here with the French soccer team, whose achievements have put the rugbymen in the shade since their last grand slam in 1998. "Aimé Jacquet [the former soccer coach] says that the great strength of the French soccer team is that they are tied together, hand and foot. In rugby that is even more important, because it is a confrontational sport. You, the English, you already have it. I used to talk to Richard Pool-Jones about it at Stade Français and he didn't understand why I was concerned."

There have been changes on the ground as well as in minds. A specialist defence coach in David Ellis and the input of the referee Joël Dumé have improved discipline; against Scotland only six penalties were given away. "We've become rigorous and patient in defence. Bernard is hyper-hard on players who give away penalties and that's changed me," notes Betsen, who was slammed by Laporte for his ill-discipline against Wales only last spring but has transformed his game this year.

Betsen explains: "With David Ellis, we have planned our tackling. Against England we worked a lot on two-man tackles, one to bring the guy down, one to get the ball, and it functioned well." A kicking coach is next; Laporte notes that these are "things the English have been doing for two years".

The man once described as "one of the worst scrum-halves in the French league" has an unambiguous style, whether he is discussing the qualities of his centre Damien Traille - "he passes, vooom, fabuleux!" - or berating his players for lack of discipline, as he famously did in front of a television camera at half-time in the Six Nations opener with Italy.

"With Bernard and Fabien [Galthié] there's no comfort zone," says De Villiers. "They are both passionate, perfectionistic and live for rugby. You can win on Saturday and on Monday you're back to square one looking at your mistakes."

In borrowing ideas - and players such as Tony Marsh and De Villiers - from abroad, Laporte has gone against the grain in a country which prides itself on things homegrown, be it language or cinema, and he has gone against the grain of French rugby. "Before Laporte, it was about free expression for the player," says Thomas Castaignède. "With Laporte it's more structured, more the English style, with less liberté."

Laporte feels that the key has been to eliminate the flakiness which went with the flair. "We weren't professional in our approach. It became a classic thing in our minds that we would win, then lose by 40 points. We won the semi-final in the 1999 World Cup, not the final. We always played on our talent. You" - and he points accusingly at me as a representative of the Anglo-Saxons - "used to call it French flair, and we believed it. We were stupid. We couldn't make excuses any more; the players had to realise that if they made a mistake the whole team suffered."

The South Africa-born De Villiers has seen both the French and the Anglo-Saxon approaches, and believes Laporte has melded them into something new. "Bernard has realised the need for a foundation. You need a structure in defence which is there the whole time, while defences are so well organised now that you need to string together phases before you can disorientate the opposition.

"A lot of players do have that natural French skill; you see players do fantastic things, which they've learnt when they were young. We don't throw it around aimlessly but in broken play you can still see that French flair. It's a mixture of both systems and it is fantastic to have."

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