It's been a tough week. Full on in training to our day off on Wednesday and no easing up until the captain's run on Friday . It has to be that way. Last season we had a light week at this time in the Six Nations and came a cropper, so with a slam at risk …

If everything goes well at the Millennium this weekend – and nobody, but nobody is taking anything for granted, I promise you that – this will be a second grand slam in five seasons, but they could not be more different.

In 2008 we might have surprised a few people. A new coaching team coming together and producing immediate results. This time around there has been the feeling that, in a country where rugby matters so much to the general feeling of wellbeing, success has been earned; has been part of a cycle and a process.

True, we weren't considered favourites at the start of the tournament. That was France and despite a couple of hiccups they are still a considerable team that could easily upturn the apple cart. They still have the potential to play like the side which should have won the World Cup final in Auckland last autumn, but we are also a team which is built on the foundations laid in New Zealand. Look around the squad and there is competition for places everywhere except perhaps one, the No3 shirt where Adam Jones is yet to feel the heat of someone else's breath on his neck. He's world class, but has to be challenged in other, more subtle ways. Elsewhere, a queue has formed to wear the shirt.

Look at the back row and the trio that came home from New Zealand to acclaim – Sam Warburton, Dan Lydiate, and Toby Faletau. With the return of Sam, they are back together, but last week against Italy Justin Tipuric, making his first start, showed there are more-than-capable understudies in every position. Sam Warburton comes back as captain and is a remarkable player in many ways, especially in giving us that little bit of extra go forward that might have been missing at times last Saturday, but there is no doubt, he will have got a bit of a hurry up from Tipuric's performance.

And that's the way of things with Wales. Early this week when Warren Gatland announced the team to play France, he was frank with three guys, saying he thought they weren't stepping up to the mark and were lucky to keep the shirt.

And honesty is very much part of the ethos. Tell a player where he is and there can be no misunderstanding. Tell a player what's expected of him and he is less likely to fall short, which is one of the reasons why we like to set targets for the defence.

After Italy I said that over the course of this Six Nations we aimed to concede fewer points than in the 2008 slam. In some areas this was seen as heaping another level of stress on an already stressful situation, but frankly I've been setting the defence targets all through this competition. Against Ireland it was 15-17 points; England 12-13, and Italy 6-7.

The French target stays secret until after the match, but if that is how we think about defence it is less of a secret that we demand much more than most teams from our tight five in attack which is, perhaps, why they have to be – and are – probably the fittest unit around.

Saying they are there to do the donkey work is putting it a bit bluntly, but that's precisely what their job is. We don't want backs getting involved in the breakdowns. I can remember a statistic, boasted proudly at the time, that in one England Test Jonny Wilkinson had been involved in helping to clean out, from memory 15 rucks; well that's precisely what we don't want.

We expect our front five to not only do their jobs at the set pieces and make their tackles in open play, but to be part of the process that creates the mismatches which the attack can exploit. And I don't mean gaps, I mean situations where a Welsh player with a high number on his back is confronted by a low-numbering member of the opposition.

That's it. It may be fairly pragmatic, but that is how we go about our work. It may be only part of the thinking, and only part of what we are about, but it may help in understanding what has been happening since that last slam in 2008.