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.
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. 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.
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.