With France arriving as Grand Slam favourites, Tuipulotu revealed he challenged the squad before the match to forget about the stakes and simply play their game.
"I think today was more about us being us and probably less about us winning or losing the game," said captain Sione Tuipulotu.
"That was my challenge to the group yesterday when I spoke in the changing room before captain's run - we just have to relieve the pressure of winning or losing this game.
"Let's just go out and be us and I felt like that was enough for us to win this game and it proved to be. We were ourselves out there. We were aggressive with our play calling. We had penalties. We didn't take threes [kicks at goal]. We went to the corner and we pressed the issue with a good French team that I felt like maybe threes weren't going to be enough against a team like that that can, as we saw, score in bunches quickly.
"I felt like we lived and died by our identity today."