CONSIDER THE question of Chaos Theory and how it applies to the French national rugby team. In the field of human endeavour, surely there can be few better examples of the former than the latter, a living example of unpredictability, uncertainty and insecurity. If you don't bring chaos into it, how do you explain how, in their own World Cup, they beat the best team on the planet and a week later lost to a side that struggled to get out of their pool. Or how could they lose at Murrayfield and still claim the Six Nations Championship, as they did two years ago.

Bernard Laporte tried to make France predictable but not even he could pull off that mindset transplant, as World Cup results show to the total bewilderment of the French fans. Now he has moved into government, Marc Lievremont has taken over and the unpredictability factor is back. He has cut and sliced his way through Laporte's selections; axed some, gambled on others and found a new generation of players he hopes will complete the circle of chaos by achieving in New Zealand the World Cup winning feat that eluded them in France.

It was Pascal Ondarts, that fearsomely tough Basque prop, who remarked "the French team have a tradition of doing well when we don't seem to be ready" and twenty-odd years later nothing has changed - the French are at their most dangerous when not even they know what to expect from the side. Lievremont has had hardly any time with his squad, and none at all with the team he will be taking to Murrayfield a week today. In the modern, professional game it is impossible to think of another team going into a major competition so under-prepared or any other side that has a chance of pulling off something outstanding despite their self-imposed handicap.

Consistency of selection? Dream on. From a World Cup squad of 30, 19 have gone with varying degrees of willingness, and only a handful of the dropped appear to have had the reassuring phone call to remind them that in French rugby there is just no such word as "never".

To be fair, there is also a certain amount of planning for the future. Lievremont has spread his net wide and brought in players from unfashionable clubs in the knowledge that he faces an end of season tour to Australia that clashes with the final stages of the French Championship, ruling out taking players from the play-off contenders.

On top of that, a lot of the change is smoke and mirrors, the detail is not quite as drastic as the unadorned figures make it look. Six uncapped players head for Scotland but the odds are that five of them will be on the bench as Lievremont gambles on being able to win the game with the core of experience from those such as Jean-Baptiste Elissalde and David Skrela, the starting half backs. If the result is in the balance, the newcomers may have to wait a while longer for their debuts.

Of the other changes, only Laporte knows why the likes of Florian Fritz, the Toulouse centre, and Elvis Vermeulen, the Clermont Auvergne No 8 who scored the championship-winning try in injury time against Scotland in Paris last year, were not involved in the World Cup, so it is no real surprise that they are back, though Lievremont must be sweating on the Heineken Cup deliberations that have yet to rule on whether Vermeulen will face a citing for alleged gauging.

In all the chopping and changing, Lievremont has still left himself with a core of experience - the 11 he has retained from the World Cup squad are all likely to start - and even the new recruits have a background of solid experience in the French Top 14 and Heineken Cup. Take the props, for example. Injuries mean that he will have to start with either Lionel Faure or Julien Brugnaut, but how much of a gamble is that? Faure is 30 and is in his third season with Sale after a solid career round the nitty-gritty of French league rugby; Brugnaut is 26 and has been helping Dax (the club Lievremont left to take the job with France) terrorise opposition scrums.

Neither is a novice.

The probability is that he will go into the Scotland match with a back division boasting 227 caps between them (an average of more than 32 each) and crucially will start with the half backs that most French fans, and maybe even Laporte, wanted to see in the World Cup side had it not been for Skrela's rabbit-in-the-headlights performance followed by an ankle injury in the opening game. He was not the only one to freeze that night and all through 2007, and now that he is fully fit and back playing club rugby with Stade Francais, he has shown a capacity to prevent his more headstrong colleagues playing too much like headless chickens. That makes him crucial to France.

The real surgery, and by implication the real blame for the World Cup debacle, lands on the forwards, in particular the front five - between retirement, injury and selection, not a single one who lost to England is still there. The two flankers, Julien Bonnaire and Thiery Dusautoir are the only survivors from the eight.

Lievremont admits that he has not had as much time as he hoped with the players and as a result he is not sure himself what to expect when they take to the field for their first match. "We have to take care of ourselves at the risk of cutting back on preparation for the first match," he told the French media. "We will insist on our message, on the game we will play, but we have to realise we have only six days to work with the players. We need a solid base of players while leaving the door open for new talent."

All of which is full of uncertainty, just how the French like it. Chaos? That's a way of life in French rugby.