“We’re under no illusions that it’s going to be a tough test, but it’s something we’re really excited for because I think we’ll be able to really push ourselves. It will really establish where we are at as a squad. It’s just a game that we’re really, really excited for,” the Offaly-born second row said.

“I know that they play fast, but we like to play fast too. In terms of defence, we’ll be trying to get up and shut them down.

“If we can bring that intensity in defence, then we’ll shut down that tempo that they may have and if we can bring tempo on our attack, we’ll be putting their defence under pressure. It ultimately does come back to us as a squad making sure that we’re ready to go on both sides of our game.”

Having already seen their rescheduled 2020 Six Nations meeting against Les Bleus cancelled last October, there are still some fears that their latest showdown could suffer a similar fate. While it seems likely the French squad will be given an exemption to the mandatory hotel quarantine that travellers from their country will have to go from Thursday morning onwards, this is yet to be officially confirmed.

As inconvenient as this may be, the experience of the past few months has taught Fryday and her team-mates to ignore factors that are out of their control.

“As a squad it’s something we’ve dealt with on numerous occasions in the last year. It’s not something we can dwell on because if it goes ahead we’ve still got to be prepared to play and if it doesn’t we’ll deal with it that way,” Fryday added.

“From our part, it is definitely just to focus on ourselves and make sure that we’re in the right headspace to kick off training again this week.”