With the French outscoring England by three tries to one, despite their own 25-17 defeat at Twickenham, Redpath knows that Ian McGeechan’s side will need to be more ruthless in the white-hot atmosphere of the Stade de France this weekend.

He said: “We never took our chances. When we put Ireland under any kind of pressure they withheld the pressure and then got something out of it.

“We didn’t put the opportunities away and at that level, when you aren’t dominating or on a par in the set-piece, you need to take chances.

“We’ve analysed France’s game at the weekend. That match wasn’t as flowing as they would have liked it to have been and there were a lot of mistakes in that game as well.

“But with three tries to one we’re aware that France will score tries so we have to make sure we have the ability to score and take these chances. They are undoubtedly going to score tries because they are a very good side at that.

“We have to understand that they’re going to score but we have to make sure that the opportunities we get, we take – if not it’s very hard to win an international rugby game.”

Scotland’s much-vaunted pack underperformed badly against the Irish and failed to present the half-backs with much in the way of clean ball to work with.

However, Redpath denied the men in blue approached the forward battles with any sense of complacency and insisted they would be desperate to get things right in Paris.

He added: “You make mistakes and you have to live by them and accept them and move on. We’ve obviously made mistakes in the Irish match.

“For quite some time the forwards have performed pretty well and on that occasion they didn’t perform as well as the standards they’ve set before – which has been quite high in the line-out and set-piece scrum.

“I sincerely hope it’s just one of those days. I don’t think we were conscious of taking anything for granted at all. All credit to Ireland, I think they did a lot of their homework.”