Headmaster hails the All Blacks

Posted by Boertjie - 29/11/09 at 11:11 am under Other Unions / Teams, Outgoing tours

New Zealand coach Graham Henry was effusive in his praise for his team after they spurned the kicking game to run France off the park with a 39-12 at the Stade Velodrome in Marseille on Saturday.
“It’s good to see two teams wanting to play attacking football because there’s been some pretty boring stuff over the last year or so in rugby.”

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The All Blacks outscored France by five tries to none in their comprehensive 39-12 win at the Stade Velodrome, running everything they could get their hands on.

“It was a special day for all players who played,” Henry said.

“It’s good to see two teams wanting to play attacking football because there’s been some pretty boring stuff over the last year or so in rugby.

“Rugby’s a great game but there were two teams wanting to attack and I thought that was pretty special.”

Efforts to pass new laws to make rugby union more attacking have been filtered down and many games become a battle of the kickers, with teams opting for aerial ping-pong down the tramlines in a bid to force an opposition error as opposed to taking the ball up in hand.

Henry, the former coach of Wales, also praised his team for mirroring last season’s contemporaries for not having conceded a try on their four-match European tour, which was pre-empted by a 32-19 win over Australia in the Bledisloe Cup in Japan and will be rounded off next week with a game at Twickenham against the Barbarians.

“To go through the last two tours of Europe without having our line crossed is also a remarkable record for the guys,” Henry said.

“There was a superb defence and the attack was outstanding. I thought it was the best attacking display by an international side for some time.

“Rugby’s a difficult game to play under modern rules and to play that game that well under those rules is a very fine achievement.

“It takes two sides to want to play: the French wanted to play and the All Blacks wanted to play.”

New Zealand do not have a great track record against France in recent years, having lost the first Test in Dunedin in June, being knocked out of the 2007 World Cup in the quarter-finals by the French and losing 42-33 the last time they played in Marseille in 2000.

“They guys really enjoy playing the French,” Henry insisted, adding that the team had gelled at the packed Stade Velodrome while “trying to finish the tour and an indifferent season on a high note”.

“We’ve been threatening to do that for some time. We didn’t come here to teach the French how to play rugby or teach them a lesson but just to play some good football and we did that,” he said.

“Forwards were able to catch and pass like backs and when you’ve got forwards like that you can create opportunities.”

The All Blacks scored five tries through Sitiveni Sivivatu, Mils Muliaina, Jerome Kaino, Cory Jane and Conrad Smith, with the
exceptional Dan Carter booting an additional 14 points.

France, who had sprung a 20-13 win over South Africa and posted a facile 43-5 victory over Samoa in their autumn internationals, responded with three Julien Dupuy penalties and a Francois Trinh-Duc drop-goal.

Captain Richie McCaw, who was named as the IRB’s player of the year after the match despite missing large chunks of the season, said Kaino’s try was the turning point of an enthralling game.

“The critical moment was when we turned over their scrum and scored a try from it,” McCaw said.

“When we had the opportunity we got down to the right end of the field and put them under pressure and it felt like we could have scored more tries.

“We’d been pretty close to putting together a performance,” he said of previous wins over Wales [19-12], Italy [20-6] and England [19-6].