All Blacks v France: Five takeaways as Cam Roigard sets ‘clearest picture’ of Dave Rennie’s era while ‘frightening’ Les Bleus depth should ‘worry all’
All Blacks winger Caleb Clarke and an inset of France's Theo Attissogbe.
Following the All Blacks’ 34-32 victory over France at the One New Zealand Stadium in Christchurch, here are our five takeaways.
Top Line: Rugby came home
Fifteen years. That’s how long Christchurch waited after the earthquake took Lancaster Park, and the most rugby-mad city in New Zealand spent those years watching Tests happen everywhere else while the stadium debate dragged through council chambers and cost reviews.
Te Kaha opened on Saturday night sold out, under the roof, and the game it hosted honoured the wait with French style and Kiwi intellect in abundance. Ruck ball for both recycled in under three seconds, phase counts hitting 17 and 18 on 11 occasions, and never once in 80 minutes more than a converted try between the sides. The roof and the fast track gave us Test rugby at Super Rugby pace, and Luke Pearce refereed for speed and got everything right, including the fingertip knock-on that chalked off Fabien Brau-Boirie’s second try.
We said in our preview that this rivalry does not do ordinary. Paris 2024 finished 30-29. This finished 34-32. Case closed. And spare a thought for the competition itself, because this exact fixture last July was a dead tour match. Add a table and a final to reach, and both teams played round one like a quarter-final.
The All Blacks won this on the floor, and by refusing to kick.
The plan was visible from the first quarter and it never changed. New Zealand kicked nothing to a French back three that feeds on transition, held the ball for minutes at a time, and made a defence in transition tackle itself to a standstill. Twenty missed first-half tackles later, the evidence was in.
The one time they broke their own rule, Damian McKenzie’s loose kick to Théo Attissogbé on 48 minutes, France scored the try of the night inside three phases. Lesson delivered, lesson received.
And then there was the breakdown, where Ardie Savea spent his first Test as permanent captain running something akin to a protection racket as he bossed the ruck like the world-class operator he is. The steal that launched Will Jordan’s first try came with New Zealand down to 14. Luke Jacobson put in 21 tackles alongside him and produced the offload of the match for Jordan’s second.
Against a back row missing François Cros and Charles Ollivon, the floor was a mismatch despite Oscar Jegou’s impressive work rate, and New Zealand knew they had an advantage there before kick-off. The All Black character mattered too, something that is an immense driver for Rennie’s men. 7-0 down inside two minutes, Ruben Love binned two minutes into his first start at 10, six knock-ons inside the France 22 including Ethan de Groot’s over the line. Eight months without a Test showed in the hands at times, but it never showed in the head.
Cam Roigard settles the scrum-half argument, for now
Four tries in four Tests. For a nine, that’s absurd. Cam Roigard’s first was pure snipe, catching Maxime Lucu half a metre too wide of the ruck guard on the stroke of half-time, the sort of lapse Roigard smells before it exists.
His second came off Jordie Barrett’s inside ball after a botched French exit, the support runner’s finish to go with the predator’s. In between he ran the whole Rennie machine, the tempo, the quick ball, the Hurricanes rhythm in a black jersey.
Lucu kicked his goals and led well, but he was beaten at his own position and beaten clearly. Dupont is injured, the World Cup is 14 months out, and the best scrum-half in the world conversation now has a genuine second name in it.
And in Roigard’s performance set the clearest picture yet of what the Rennie era intends to be. The new coach promised optimism in the build-up, and it turned out to be more than a press conference word. This was high-tempo, beautifully shaped rugby, heads-up in the truest sense, players scanning and playing what was in front of them rather than what the script said, exactly the mindset Rennie described when he spoke about scoring from anywhere.
Love, for all the early chaos of his card, controlled it well on his first start at 10, distributing flat, kicking only when the picture demanded and landing the pressure goal that mattered on 66 minutes. But Roigard was the orchestrator, brilliantly so, setting the pulse at every ruck and deciding when the machine accelerated. One Test in, the blueprint is unmistakable. Play fast, play smart, play what you see. The accuracy will come, the identity already has.
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Penaud, brilliant and dropped by half-time
Ninety seconds in, Damian Penaud had scored the first try in Nations Championship history, storming onto a move of beautiful French simplicity, the perfect answer to his Six Nations axing. Forty minutes in, Fabien Galthié hooked him.
Both decisions were right, and that’s the whole Penaud story. With the ball he was France’s most dangerous player, three line breaks, and always hunting, prepared to seek work off his wing. But without the ball he was a signposted weakness, biting in off his wing four times in the first half as Caleb Clarke and the All Blacks went back to his channel again and again, knowing they could find a fold in the edge when Penaud bit in.
Nine days of New Zealand analysis had found the door, and they never stopped walking through it. When Hastoy came on to full-back, Spring to the wing, the problem was patched, and France’s shape looked better. Axed from a squad in February, axed at an interval in July, and still undroppable from any sane World Cup 2023. There is no other player in the game quite like him, for better and worse in the same evening.
France lost by two with half a team, and that should worry everyone
No Dupont, no Ntamack, no Ramos, no Cros, no Ollivon, no Bielle-Biarrey, no Meafou, no Flament, no Nouchi, no Gros, no Mauvaka. An entire first-choice spine at home, and France lost by two in a city where they hadn’t won since 1994.
The attack was a joy, nine offloads against three handling errors, 12 line breaks, and a finish that had Te Kaha’s heart in its mouth when Matthieu Jalibert, controlled and excellent all night, scored off Nicolas Depoortère’s bench thrust on 77 minutes. Yoram Moefana was back to his very best, all gainline and dominant tackles. Oscar Jégou was superb whilst Marko Gazzotti made 18 tackles at 21 and looked like a ten-year 50-Test international.
Tom Staniforth topped the carry count; Hastoy’s move to 15 restored the two-playmaker shape France have missed without Ramos and their attack visibly breathed again, even if his wild pass out of defence gifted the position for the penalty that settled it. But they will be kicking themselves on the flight home, because the defence gave this Test away.
Good line speed, no width behind it, narrow time and again in the same channel, the unmistakable look of a system between regimes after the Edwards era. Add the amateurish exits, the in-goal spill and no answer to Savea on the deck, and you can rightly conclude that unforced errors, not class, were the margin and Galthié will have learned plenty. The French depth is frightening, the attack travels, and the defence is the winter’s work.
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