Dave Rennie pinpoints 'outrageous' All Blacks stat in France win

It certainly didn’t all go the All Blacks‘ way in Christchurch, but one of Dave Rennie’s biggest calling cards was evident from the outset and executed to a degree the coach would describe as “outrageous” postgame.

New Zealand claimed a narrow, two-point win to kick off a new era under a new head coach, in a brand-new stadium and in a brand-new global competition, weathering a frantic French storm in the process.

The coach, known as a big analyser of statistics, wasted no time in diving into the numbers from the match, entering his postgame press conference with a firm grasp on his team’s performance on paper.

Those stats came to the fore when Rennie was asked what his favourite aspect of the win was.

“I love the effort. I love the optimism,” he responded. “There was one time we were probably overly optimistic; we had a penalty, and we had two (players), and they had four.

“But I thought we were able to play with a really high tempo; the lightning-quick ball was almost 85 per cent, which is just outrageous.

“I thought we did a lot of really good things with the ball, but we just needed to play through them a little bit more there. Their big men were tiring, and they were able to play high on the edge, and we made a few errors there.

“I can’t fault the effort, I love the mindset, we’ve just got to be a lot more accurate.”

On the flip side of that equation, Fabien Galthié’s squad were also operating at breakneck speed around the breakdown, only five per cent off the mark set by New Zealand.

Rennie recognised his side was unable to slow France’s roll, but was confident that it would come right with time.

“We just need more time. More reps. More around combinations,” he said. “There was a lot of guts (shown); we scrambled really well at times. We’ve just got to get off the line and apply a lot more pressure, get two in the tackle more often to give them slow ball so we can reset and get off the line and do it again.

“We spent a bit of time on it over the past few days. We just need a lot more, and it’ll make a massive difference because you can give them slow ball, which gives us time to fold, get appropriate numbers and get off the line.

“But both teams played pretty similarly, had a similar mindset. If you look at a lot of the stats, the numbers are very similar.

“We’ve got to be a bit better, but I like the mindset, and if we tidy up a few things, we would have created a lot more opportunities tonight.”

Neither team was able to score back-to-back points until a 65th-minute Ruben Love penalty was followed by a 70th-minute try by Will Jordan. The nine tries and penalties prior to Love and Jordan’s points had alternated, with the lead changing hands frequently. Perhaps fittingly, France had the last say in the game, continuing the blow-for-blow bout.

Rennie labelled the back-and-forth nature of the Test as an “arm-wrestle.”

“We couldn’t shake them. We’d score, and then we made a couple of errors that gifted them good field position.

“It wasn’t a great start, was it? Down seven-nil and a yellow card, but I thought we managed the next 10 minutes really well and managed to score. We constantly got our noses in front and then gave them an opportunity, and they’re good enough to take it.

“Their short passing game was excellent, and we just lacked a little bit of line speed on the inside to apply a bit more pressure. But no lack of effort.”