Rugby Union: Preview of Gloucester v Stade Francais

They should hold a sports-psychology convention at Kingsholm today. They might not be able to hold it in the Shed, because that will be occupied, nor the steaming, heaving changing rooms and bars deep within the grandstand opposite. But on the field there will be rich pickings.

This time two years ago, Gloucester headed to Limerick to take on Munster in the final pool game of the Heineken Cup. They were surely home and dry. All they had to do to make the quarter-finals was not get beaten by more than 26 points or not concede four tries. Either would have done. But it's terrible having so simple a directive, particularly at a place such as Thomond Park. Somehow you just know that the one thing you must avoid at all costs is the one thing you'll end up doing.

Gloucester duly conceded four tries, lost by a margin of precisely 27 points and went out of the competition. And they played throughout as if they knew all along that such an outcome was inevitable.

Now, though, the situation is reversed. Gloucester are at home, and Stade Français come visiting to Kingsholm - as fearsome a lair as Thomond Park. The situation for Stade is simple. In order to make the quarter-finals, they must not lose. Or, if they will insist on losing, they must at least avoid conceding four tries. Or, if they will insist on conceding four, they must at least stay within one try of Gloucester. Or, if they will insist on drifting out to two tries distant, they must at least stay within eight points. If they do all that, they'll be fine. It's enough to make you panic just thinking about it.

But for those sports psychologists the interest will be in the effect that such conditions have on a team. Where Gloucester looked haunted and unsure in trying to avoid a self-fulfilling prophecy at Thomond Park two years, how will they react in pursuing this positive, if more challenging, mission?

Dave Ellis, their defence coach, is in no doubt. 'I know for a fact,' he says, 'that Fabien Galthié [Stade's coach] would much prefer to be looking for a win at Kingsholm, rather than just trying not to get beaten.'

Ellis is in a fine position to make such an assertion. Not only is he Gloucester's defence coach, he is also France's, so he is well acquainted with the hopes and fears of those who make up the very spine of the Stade Français set-up.

'Once we'd got over the disappointment of losing at Ulster last weekend and once we'd started looking at Stade, I just got a big buzz. And bigger for me than most people, because we're playing players I know inside out. It's the old feeling I get during the Six Nations when we're playing England. The buzz I get from wanting to put one over England and all the boys at Gloucester is exactly the same as I've got now.'

And the Stade Français play ers in the France camp are likely to feel that little bit more naked without the Yorkshire canniness that Ellis provides for the national side in their defensive organisation. Galthié has picked Ellis's brains, and Brian Liebenberg, the France and Stade Français centre, has proved a willing disciple, but Stade, like most French clubs, do not have a specialist defence coach.

'I've concentrated this week on what our defence can do to them,' he says. 'They are fine defending first and second phase, but when they're vulnerable is when they're on the attack and suddenly they're turned over. Going from defence to attack is easy, but going from attack to defence is another matter. It's something all the French sides have difficulty with.'

Ellis, despite experiencing the horror of Thomond Park, has also been on the right side of a remark able turnaround. Like so many top-flight defence coaches in union, he hails from rugby league, and while coaching the French league side, Villeneuve, in the late 1990s he masterminded a second-leg quarter-final cup victory against Pia, their rivals in the South of France, that overturned a 32-point deficit from the away first leg. He feels the same energies at force for this one.

'From the first move of that game, you could see everyone believe they could do it. It was very similar to the Munster win over us. The team that had to do it had control.

'One of the things that we have that Munster had and that I had with my Villeneuve team is home support. You can just imagine the roar from the Shed as we start getting into the game and getting points on the board. It will be like we had against Leicester two weeks ago, when we scored two tries in the first 10 minutes. If that happens against Stade Français, they won't be able to react like Leicester did. Psychologically, they'll have a lot of difficulties coping with the after-effects of that.'

There will indeed be all sorts of psychological things going on. The scribbling pencils at Kingsholm today will not belong solely to the journos.