Report: When France hope to play the All Blacks at RWC 2023
While the pool reveal for the 2023 Rugby World Cup was met with reservations due to the similarities between it and previous years, there was one tasty quirk which still has fans salivating.
New Zealand and France will meet in the group stages of the competition in what will be their eighth World Cup showdown. Adding some extra intrigue to the clash is the fact that the tournament is, of course, being staged in France.
While the All Blacks have had the better of the two sides throughout the fixtures, winning five of the seven to date, Les Bleus’ two victories are arguably better remembered by Kiwi fans due to how emotional the losses were.
In 1999, France triumphed 43-21 in the semi-finals. Eight years later, a heavily favoured All Blacks team were beaten 20-18 at the quarter-final stages in what was their worst World Cup performance to date.
France won’t have the opportunity to knock New Zealand out of the 2023 competition until the final, should both teams progress that far, but they do have the chance to inflict a first-ever pool-stages defeat on the men in black.
Since the first iteration of the tournament in 1987, World Cups have always kicked off with a game featuring the hosts. Typically, especially since the game went professional, their opposition has been a team that they’ve been expected to beat – but not by an outrageous margin.
That’s somewhat understandable. Many fans want to see the tournament hosts kick off the competition with a win – but they still want the game to be a spectacle. This is especially true for the casual local viewers, who might only be tuning in to the game because it’s being played at a World Cup in their home country.
Since that first flagship competition in New Zealand in 87, seven of the opening nine matches have been won by the hosts, with England falling short against NZ in 1991 and France suffering at the hands of Argentina in 2007.
With France and New Zealand again in the same pool for the first time since 2011, the two rivals will naturally square off at some early stage in the competition – but the jury is still out on when that clash should take place.
From the two nations’ points of view, would it be better to kick the competition off with a challenge, then be able to cruise into the knockout stages of the competition, or would it make more sense for the toughest pool match to occur closer towards the end of the group stages?
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Perhaps the All Blacks, who have flourished on tough competition, would prefer the latter.
In 2007, New Zealand toughest pool match came against a lowly Scotland team who they ended up besting 40-0. A few weeks later, they were undercooked and bundled out by France.
At the last competition, they played South Africa in the opening week and scored a well-taken 23-13 win. The only other tier-one team they played between that opening match and their loss to England in the semi-finals was Ireland, a team who have never progressed past the quarter-finals. The All Blacks’ 32-point win in that game marked the second-largest win in a quarter-final in the tournament’s history and when they came up against an England side that had been building into the competition with victories over Argentina and Australia, they barely fired a shot.
The latest report from French paper L’Equipe, however, suggests that French coach Fabien Galthie wants his side to play the All Blacks in the opening game of the 2023 competition.
With France and New Zealand the strongest teams in the pool, the likely only other semi-competitive games for the top two sides in the group will involve Italy, the 14th ranked nation in the world.
Should Galthie and the French rugby union’s request to World Rugby come to fruition, history will be made one way or another. A victory for the French would end New Zealand’s unbeaten run during the pool stages of World Cups, while a loss would make France the first host nation to have lost two opening night games.
The draw for the 2019 World Cup was unveiled in November of 2017, which suggests that World Rugby likely won’t release the full tournament schedule for 2023’s competition until much later this year.
Comments on RugbyPass
We’re building a bridge but can't agree where the river is.
2 Go to commentsfirst no arms shoulder or helmet tackle into his rib cage is going to be so very painful even to watch. go back to RU mate.
1 Go to commentsBulls by 5. Plus another 50.
3 Go to commentsJohan Goosen avatar. Cute. Surely someone at RP knows how to do a google image search?
3 Go to commentsCan’t these games play a little earlier? Asking for a friend.
3 Go to commentsIt’s impressive that we can see huge stadiums with attendance in the 40 000 to 50 000 region. It shows how popular this competition is becoming. What is even more impressive is the massive growth in broadcast viewership. The URC is one of the two best leagues in the World, the other being the Top14.
7 Go to commentsChristie is not Sottish, like the majority of the Scotland team.
2 Go to commentsHold the phone, decline over-rated. Is it a one game, dead cat bounce or the real thing? Has the Penney dropped? Stay tuned.
45 Go to commentsTotally deserved win for the Crusaders Far smarter than the Chiefs who seem to be avoiding the basics when it matters Hotham showed them what was missing and Hannah seems a real find - a tad light but that can be fixed over time
8 Go to commentsGreat insight into the performance culture with Sarries and I predict Christie will be a fixture in the Scotland team now for some time to come. However, he is slightly missing his own point around Scotland “being soft” when he cites physicality examples in defence of that slight. The issue is much closer to the example he referenced around feeling off before a game but being told “it doesn’t matter, you can still play well” by Farrell. Until Scotland can get their psyche in that square, they will carry on folding under extreme pressure…
2 Go to comments> We are having to adapt, evolve and innovate more than when we were in Super Rugby where there was only really one style that everybody had to play to gain the most success. Have = able to? Interesting what that one style might be? I thought SA sides still had bad tours now, or at least bad schedule, months away? Those extra few hours flights have to be a killer though, no surprise to see their sides doing so badly at the start of the season each year. I wouldn’t enjoy that unfairness as a supporter.
7 Go to commentsThe problem for NZ, and Aus, is they ripped up the SR model and lost a massive chunk of revenue that hasn’t been replaced. Don’t forget SA clubs went North because they were left with no choice, Argy unceremoniously binned and Japan cast adrift. Now SR wasn’t perfect, far from it, but they’ve jumped into something without an effective plan, so far, to replace what they’ve lost. The biggest revenue potential now lies in Japan but it won’t be easy or quick to unlock, they are incredibly insular in culture as a nation. In the meantime, there is a serious time bomb sitting under SH rugby and if it happens then the current financial challenges will look like a picnic. IF the Boks follow their provincial teams and head north then it’s revenue meltdown. Not guaranteed to happen but the status quo is a very odd hybrid, with the Boks pointing one way and the clubs pointing the other way. And for as long as that remains then the threat is real.
45 Go to commentsI think Etene has had some good tuition, likely while at the Warriors to be a professional that helped his rugby jump, but he was certainly thrown in the deep end way too early. Should have arguably 20 less SR caps, and therefor a way better record that he does at his age, but his development would have been fast tracked by the need to satiate his signing away from league. Again, credit to him and others that he has done it so well. Easy to fall over under that pressure in the big leagues like that but he kept at it when I myself wasn’t sure he was good enough.
1 Go to commentsAwesome story. I wonder what a bigger American (SA) scene might have mean for Brex.
1 Go to comments“Johnny McNicholl and the Crusaders” save a Penney. Who has been in camp this week and showed them how to play?
8 Go to commentsSo, reports of the Crusaders’ demise / terminal decline are perhaps just - slightly - premature/exaggerated…? 🤔 Will we see a deep-dive into that by the estimable Rugbypass scribes, and maybe one or two mea culpas? Thought not.
8 Go to comments1. The Chiefs are rudderless without DMac, which enhances his AB chances 2. Chiefs pack are powderpuffs. The hard men arent there anymore 3. They had their golden title chance last yr and wont threaten this yr. Gone in second round of playoffs.
8 Go to commentsHonestly, why did you have to publish such a foolish article the day they play us? 😂
45 Go to comments> They are not standalone entities. They are linked to an amateur association which holds the FFR licence that allows the professional side to compete in the league. That’s a great rule. This looks like the chicken or egg professional scenario. How long is it going to be before the club can break even (if that is even a thing in French rugby)? If the locals aren’t into well it would be good to se them drop to amateur level (is it that far?). Hope they can reset from this level and be more practical, there will be a time when they can rebuild (if France has there setup right).
1 Go to commentsWhat about changing the ball? To something heavier and more pointed that bounces unpredictably. Not this almost round football used these days.
35 Go to comments