France were quietly confident of pulling off one of the biggest upsets in Davis Cup history after taking a 2-1 lead over Australia in the final in Melbourne today.
"We came here with nothing to lose but the guys are starting to believe they can win now," French captain Guy Forget said.
"The hardest part is still to come...but we believe we can do it."
France won the pivotal doubles match to take the lead going into Sunday's reverse singles and need to win just one of the final two matches to take their ninth title.
Australia were heavy favourites to win the tie before it started but history is now on France's side with the winner of the doubles match having gone on to take the title in each of the previous 23 Davis Cup finals.
"We did everything we could do in the last 12 days to do our best and prepare for the grass and the weather," Forget said.
"We had nothing to lose but we had the opportunity to be offensive and take our chances and to win and here we are 2-1.
"One thing I didn't want the players to do was to be shy, I wanted them to go for their shots and give 100 percent and it didn't matter what happened and that's just what they did."
The heroes for France in Saturday's doubles match were veterans Cedric Pioline and Fabrice Santoro. They lost the first set against Patrick Rafter and Lleyton Hewitt but came back to win 2-6 6-3 7-3 6-1.
At 32, Pioline had considered making himself unavailable for Davis Cup this year but was persuaded by Forget to change his mind.
"He convinced me to keep going and even if I wasn't going to play singles I could just be there and help the others with my experience and I'm glad I did," Pioline said.