France’s opening night win over All Blacks shows they mean business at Rugby World Cup

Whereas there seems to have been a largely underwhelmed reaction back home about France’s opening night 27-13 win over the All Blacks at the Rugby World Cup, amid the impassioned din of the near 80,000 sell-out at the Stade de France, it felt very, very significant. Maybe you had to be there or maybe being there distorted things. It’s often the way.

Yes, France hardly fired a shot in the first half. Yes, there was plenty of aerial ping-pong, 23 kicks out of hand by France and 20 by New Zealand in that first period alone as he each eschewed risks and played the percentages from their own half. Yes, the All Blacks should have led at half-time. Yes, Julien Marchand’s departure added to their worsening injury toll.

Yet to witness France explode into life, to break free from their own shackles, impose their blend of power and flair, while seemingly becoming joined at the hip with their crowd as the volume and the songs and the chants increased, resolved any Irish/South African/Scottish debate about which of these might be preferable opponents in the quarter-finals.

For the abiding impression when coming away from Saint Denis among tens of thousands of boisterous, good-humoured and contented French supporters, is that this opening night demonstrated how tough Les Bleus will be to beat in front of their own fired up public, and they are only likely to benefit from this experience.

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For starters, after an opening ceremony in which, predictably president Emmanuel Macron was roundly booed and whistled, home crowd and team alike were rocked by the All Blacks slicing open their defence before Mark Telea scored the quickest try in World Cup history off Beauden Barrett’s kick-pass.

That wasn’t in the script. The home crowd rallied, imploring their team to respond and eager to hail their positive moments.

Yet le pression on the French team was so palpable you could reach out and bite it. They survived until half-time due to their long kicking game, superior scrum and the place kicking of Thomas Ramos, and needed to after being outflanked and pierced, missing 22 tackles in the period (and 32 in total) as the All Blacks fired all the shots.

Brilliantly deceived by another Joe Schmidt strike play – Ardie Savea of all people chipping over the advancing blue line – in the build up to Telea’s second try, the French response thereafter was altogether different.

While Jaco Peyper, unconvincing again albeit under inordinate pressure, resisted the cacophony of boos which reverberated around the Stade de France imploring the officials to review Reiko Ioane’s floated pass to Telea. From the vantage point of the press box it looked flat.

The din hit maximum again when Will Jordan took out Ramos in the air, and the All Blacks winger was rightly sinbinned. But in both instances and others, the constant replays on the big screens whipped the crowds into a frenzy.

Peyper and his team weren’t always swayed, and a typically Shakespearean French crowd evidently felt aggrieved, but the penalty count was still a whopping 13-5 to the home side. This is what all away teams will be up against.

There’s a purpose to that long kicking game. France earned 61 per cent territory from 49 per cent possession. Their maul and increasing power in the collisions – tellingly they made eight dominant tackles to just three by the All Blacks – imposed an increasingly vice-like grip

But they also cut loose, making 15 offloads, using their footwork and finally rolling the dice when going to the corner against 14 men for Matthieu Jalibert to switch the point of attack, accelerate, dance and pass for the ever-dangerous Damian Penaud for his 20th try in his last 20 Tests, and 30th for France overall.

Sure, a fortuitous bounce contributed to Melvyn Jaminet’s try to make it 27-13. Flattering? It’s funny how the superior, increasingly dominant team is often rewarded in the endgame.

France might easily have had another try following some more Penaud brilliance. They also left eight points behind off the tee. As much as the All Blacks should have led at half-time, France could easily have had a bigger statement win.

Significantly too, France pulled away and won convincingly without Antoine Dupont opening his box of magic tricks. The captain admitted they would happily have taken such a scoreline beforehand, but added: “We all know we can do better than that. There are shots that we can play better, points also that we give away too easily to New Zealand. In the end, it was an average match on our part and we almost gave the All Blacks 30 points. It’s like that.”

Of the second-half turnaround, Dupont admitted: “We had to free ourselves. We were a little inhibited at the start of the match and New Zealand kept us under pressure in the ruck areas. We found ourselves unable to play three times in a row. We had to let go, play attacking balls, dare to make one more pass.

“The pressure of this opening match pushed us to play more securely. But this additional step is precisely the one that generally gives us solutions. It was the half-time speech. We had to find this relaxation while maintaining what had kept us in the match until then: defence and conquest.”

It’s also worth noting that prior to their benchmark 40-25 win here in November 2021, France had previously lost 14 times in a row to the All Blacks. Now they’ve backed that up and inflicted the All Blacks with their first World Cup pool defeat in 32 matches.

For now, Les Bleus can feel good about themselves, for this victory was also significant for the World Cup’s mood music in France, and specifically around the home team. TF1 revealed their average audience for Friday’s game was 15.4 million, their biggest audience this year and France’s biggest audience in sport outside of football in the last 10 years.

The team will now feel the love of their wider public as they complete their pool against Uruguay, Namibia and Italy in Lille, Marseilles and Lyons, while gradual welcoming back Cyril Baille, Anthony Jelonch and Jonathan Danty.

Then, faced with the same pression again in the knock-out stages, France should only benefit from this experience.