Brian O'Driscoll Ireland
Ireland legend Brian O'Driscoll waves to spectators after his final home game, 8 March. Reuters

There is no better way for Ireland to send one of their all-time greats off on a high than with the Six Nations title.

Win at the Stade de France in Paris on Saturday, and Brian O'Driscoll, one of the greatest players in the sport, will end his career in the best possible manner - with that wonderful Six Nations 2014 title in hand.

O'Driscoll, as a precocious 21-year-old, scored a magnificent hat-trick on France soil in 2000 to give Ireland a victory, a win they haven't managed to repeat since. It would be fitting if O'Driscoll can bow out of the game with a similar result.

"[Saturday] will bring out the best in Brian," teammate Denis Hickey was quoted as saying by the Guardian. "When you get to 140 caps you need to be shooting for something special. He would not want it to be anything else but a championship decider, in Paris, with a big challenge soaked in history.

"Very few players have Brian's impact in France. They really respect him. They will appreciate it's his last game and they'll know the link to 2000. In a grudging way they'll want to see him perform.

"They won't want Ireland to win but they like their heroes in France. They know it's difficult to score three tries in Paris, but it's a hell of a lot harder to maintain that level for 14 years. That's Brian's real achievement."

Ireland are the favourites to win the title, holding a big points advantage over England, and to keep the consistency going and ensure there is not much disruption, coach Joe Schmidt had made just one change to the side that eased past Italy, with Peter O'Mahony replacing Iain Henderson in the starting lineup. Ian Madigan will act as backup for Jonny Sexton, with the former replacing Paddy Jackson on the bench.

"Sometimes you make those replacements because of injury and sometimes to change up what you're doing," Schmidt said of choosing Madigan over Jackson. "I feel confident Ian's the right man to do those two things for us within the current squad.

"He played through the autumn and he has trained with us for the full eight weeks throughout this tournament. If you can't show confidence in a player then perhaps you've got to go outside the squad, and that's not ideal either.

"Ian is a very good player and he does give us coverage through the midfield and at full-back. It's been a pretty combative campaign - we just started to creak a little bit, so we just needed the coverage.

"In England we got a couple of niggles, and we didn't have as broad a coverage on the bench as we would have liked. If Johnny had been injured, Paddy would have started. But it's Ian's ability to cover 10, centre and 15. He's a reasonably confident young man. He's a massively hard-working young man as well.

"We're in a really luxurious position. It was always a concern when Ronan O'Gara retired, but then Johnny replaced him. And now we've got two emerging 10s behind him growing into the role."

France coach Philippe Saint-Andre, though, has made a few changes to his lineup with Remi Tales, Gael Fickou, Dimitri Szarzewski and Louis Picamoles all coming in for Jules Plisson, Brice Mach, Sebastien Vahaamahina and Maxime Mermoz.

Six Nations: France vs Ireland Live TV information (Match starts 5 pm GMT, 10.30 pm IST, 1 pm ET)

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Six Nations: France vs Ireland Live Streaming information (Match starts 5 pm GMT, 10.30 pm IST, 1 pm ET)

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UK HERE or HERE
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Lineups: France: Brice Dulin, Yoann Huget, Mathieu Bastareaud, Gael Fickou, Maxime Medard, Remi Tales, Maxime Machenaud, Thomas Domingo, Dimitri Szarzewski, Nicolas Mas, Pascal Pape, Yoann Maestri, Louis Picamoles, Alexandre Lapandry, Damien Chouly.

Replacements: Guilhem Guirado, Vincent Debaty, Rabah Slimani, Alexandre Flanquart, Sebastien Vahaamahina, Wenceslas Lauret, Jean Marc Doussain, Maxime Mermoz.

Ireland: Rob Kearney, Andrew Trimble, Brian O'Driscoll, Gordon D'Arcy, David Kearney, Jonathan Sexton, Conor Murray, Cian Healy, Rory Best, Mike Ross, Devin Toner, Paul O'Connell, Peter O'Mahony, Chris Henry, Jamie Heaslip.

Replacements: Sean Cronin, Jack McGrath, Martin Moore, Iain Henderson, Jordi Murphy, Eoin Reddan, Ian Madigan, Fergus McFadden.