The majority of this current crop of Wales players have won Six Nations Grand Slams in the recent past and Humphreys believes such experience will prove invaluable for what he expects to be the toughest game of the Championship by far.
“There are 25 of this squad who have won big in this tournament,” said the Wales forwards coach.
“You are led by that and by Alun Wyn Jones who sets the tone very very well about this. There is nobody who has been through this more than he has.
“We all understand where we need to get to to win this game. The characters are massive.
“Ken Owens and Jonathan Davies have been huge in terms of what they’ve brought to the group and the experiences they’ve had. When you have a team-meeting and one of those stands up and says something you listen based on the fact that they’ve been there, done it and experienced all that stuff.
“That’s worth its weight in gold. There are four or five characters in this group who are massive in driving the standards and the belief.”
Wales have made drastic improvements since the Autumn Nations Cup and will be playing for the Grand Slam this weekend.
And former Wales hooker Humphreys insists Wayne Pivac and his coaching staff, along with the players, never lost faith. “We took the Autumn Nations Cup to be something else and said this is about building depth. We couldn’t have shouted it any louder,” said the former Ospreys, Scotland and Glasgow forwards coach.
“We can’t control what is said outside that, but we had belief coming into the Six Nations that if we pick our best team available, we would be a very competitive team. On top of that, the people who had that experience of playing in the autumn have been invaluable for us and allowed us to create momentum.
“Our philosophy is how our coaching group want to play. It helps then when you have consistency of selection.
“You are not making 10 changes between each Test. That was the philosophy going into the autumn and this was different.”
Wales will face a France side who will be hurting after being beaten by England last weekend, but Humphreys insists Wales will have to go up another level if they are to triumph at the Stade de France.
“We believe we are going up against one of the best teams in the world and that we are going to have to be at our very, very best to get what we want from the weekend,” he said.
“There is excitement that we are obviously in the hunt for a big prize, but it is contained by the fact we have got a huge game in front of us and we need to be better than we were in all the games before this.
“We’ve learnt that France are an extremely physical team, the most physical team and the biggest pack we are going to play against. They are bigger than South Africa.
“Collisions are going to be massive in this game. I keep on saying it, but to get what we want out of this game, we are going to have to be very clinical and at our very, very best.
“There is obviously excitement. Games don’t come along like this very often and we are looking forward to going out there and having a crack at an extremely good team.”
