New Zealand vs France: All Blacks haunted by French history ahead of renewing Rugby World Cup rivalry

World Cup defeat in Cardiff eight years ago; a semi-final ambush in 1999; the infamous Battle of Nantes. If mighty New Zealand have a weakness, it is Les Bleus. Ian Herbert considers an intense rivalry ahead of today’s next chapter

France face the Haka ahead of their 2007 Rugby World Cup quarter-final with New Zealand (Getty Images)

The All Blacks have the barricades up, in more ways than one. Vast green screens are hoisted around the fields on the Swansea coast where they have repaired to prepare for today’s quarter-final against France and there is not much by way of public discussion either.

Three players eventually arrive – 15 minutes late for an appearance which has already been put back by two hours – but there is to be no discussion beyond the 10 minutes of straight batting they offer from behind a table in the refectory of Swansea University’s athletics pavilion. The ascetic surroundings furnish you with the distinct sense of a group of individuals on edge, not wanting to tempt fate with any act of exuberance.

Why the serious faces when they find themselves fielding questions, on Tuesday, about the internecine strife within the France squad, which had the banner headline of that very morning’s L’Equipe urging the players to commit an act of insurrection against coach Philippe Saint-André? L’Appel à la Révolte (“Call to revolt”) the paper pleaded. Because that collective memory of the last time New Zealand took up residence in South Wales for a Rugby World Cup knockout is still too sharp. Only three of this squad lived through the All Black quarter-final elimination of 2007 – same Cardiff turf, same opposition as today. Yet it reinforced the sense – by no means erased by their narrow win over the French in the 2011 final – that the death-or-glory stages of the competition don’t suit their introspection. “So intense. They think about it too much,” says a French observer when Kieran Read, Jerome Kaino and Charlie Faumuina have finished talking.

The All Blacks certainly seem grateful for the small mercy of breathing the sea air of Swansea Bay, having been spared the indignity of returning to the Vale of Glamorgan hotel, 12 miles west of Cardiff, where the memory of 2007 will always be lodged. The defeat eight years ago was about as desperate as any could be. The dominant New Zealanders commanded an almighty 73 per cent territorial advantage, won 166 rucks to France’s four and made only 73 tackles compared with France’s 331. Yet largely through the ineptitude of an inexperienced referee, Wayne Barnes – who awarded the southern hemisphere side a mere two penalties in the entire 80 minutes and did not detect Damien Traille’s forward pass to Frédéric Michalak, which helped send Yannick Jauzion away for the 69th-minute winning try – they lost.

New Zealand players react to defeat by France in the 2007 Rugby World Cup (Getty Images)

The indignity did not end there for Ted, Shag and Smithy, as the coaching triumvirate of Graham Henry, Steve Hansen and Wayne Smith were universally known. So certain were New Zealand of progressing that they had not protected any flights home, so half the squad found themselves stranded in Cardiff for nearly four days.

Richie McCaw, the captain, with whom the defeat sat most heavily, remembers the small consolations, such as they were. The All Black tour parties quickly moved on so the players were spared the embarrassment of encountering any when they finally ventured out into Cardiff.

Snapshots of what the New Zealand Herald this week recalled as “Nightmare in Cardiff: the cold day in hell” live with McCaw still. The uneasy feeling when the All Blacks lost all three tosses for their usual dressing room, hotel and choice of kit and wound up watching Ted talk under the Undeb Rygbi Cymru (“Welsh Rugby Union”) posters plastered over the walls. The struggle to “lift the game to an altitude where they can’t breathe,” as McCaw – recalled to the side – has defined the All Black modus operandi. And, with Dan Carter, Byron Kelleher and Nick Evans all off the field, the cold realisation that the notion of an 11th-hour drop-kick, communicated on the Cardiff pitch by physio Peter Gallagher, was hopeless.

“There’s no drop-kick in our playbook,” was the thought that raced through McCaw’s mind at the time. He was right. Luke McAlister’s desperate effort bounced twice before it reached the goal-line. It was history repeating itself: a reprise of the 1999 World Cup semi-final at Twickenham, in which the All Blacks led 17-10 at half-time but lost 43-31 to the same nation.

I’ve not heard too much talk about it

&#13; <p>Kieran Read, New Zealand</p>&#13;

“I’ve not heard too much talk about it,” No 8 Read says of 2007 when the subject crops up in the Swansea refectory. “Of the current team there are only two or three guys still around. For the rest of us it’s fresh and exciting going into the weekend.” And the men beside him nod in union.

The French observers in the audience seek to extract something from them. “If you were a French player, what would you say to your mates?” asks one, perhaps inviting Read to say something undiplomatic about the defeat to Ireland, though the 29-year-old sees it coming. “If we were French, we would have a lot of trust in what we were doing,” he replies.

That’s not a sentiment that many French players, and most of the French nation, currently share. L’Equipe did attempt to divert attention yesterday from the dubious standard of the rugby inculcated by Saint-André, by ruminating on Cardiff night life and its “invraisemblable baccanale” (“incredible drinking”), its Valley Girls and code of conduct: “drink until you fall over and eat when it’s too late”. The puritanism cannot obscure the fundamental difference between 2007 and now, though.

That side of Bernard Laporte’s had won back-to-back Six Nations titles the two previous years. The 2011 squad which lost 8-7 in that narrow final had won the 2010 Grand Slam. As the France-based writer Gavin Mortimer observed by way of comparison yesterday, the 2015 squad has finished no higher than fourth in the last four Six Nations championships and has suffered series whitewashes in New Zealand and Australia.

In such do-or-die moments as these, coaches look beyond the usual to the inspirational. Saint-André must reach for the collective memory of France’s extraordinary accomplishments against the All Blacks down the years, because no quarter has been spared at times.

That was certainly the case on the banks of the Loire, 29 years ago, when the touring All Blacks were submitted to what history has remembered as “the Battle of Nantes”: one of the most ferociously violent rugby matches ever played, in which a French side looking to intimidate the tourists prevailed 16-3.

It helped the piquancy that French intelligence services had bombed the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour a year earlier. The All Blacks No 8 Wayne “Buck” Shelford required stitches in his scrotum after being raked by a boot as he was trapped in a ruck. The same player also lost four teeth and was knocked out in another incident. The journalist Pierre Ballester’s investigation into French players’ use of amphetamines over a number of decades, published this year, focused heavily on this match.

Saint-André is even better placed to cite the memory of French resolve from eight years later, in 1994, because it was he who captained the side which ended the extraordinary 21-year Kiwi unbeaten record at the fortress of Eden Park in Auckland. Again, those French powers of recovery. They trailed 20-16 with three minutes remaining when a counter-attack saw them run the ball the length of the field from their own in-goal area. Nine France players handled the ball before Jean-Luc Sadourny placed it over the try-line.

“A counter-attack from the end of the world,” Saint-André called it at the time and so the try came to be known as “the try from the end of the world”. Such are the legends he will take into today and which will form a part of the psychological fabric of this weekend, however much the All Black community attempt to suggest the opposite.

“There’s always been some times when you wonder who’s turned up,” said Hansen, the man they still call Shag. “But when it’s a big occasion they turn up. They always turn up. And we’ve got to turn up with them.”