All Blacks v France: ‘No excuses’ as Dave Rennie’s men attempt to break slow-starting trend

Liam Napier in Christchurch

All Blacks v France, Saturday, 7.05pm

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Season-opening tests are traditionally nervous, rusty affairs from the All Blacks.

Can Dave Rennie buck the trend to snap the team’s slow-starting moniker?

The past two opening tests of the year for the All Blacks have been near things.

Two years ago, optimism surrounding Scott Robertson’s tenure swiftly dissipated after a scratchy 16-15 escape against England in Dunedin.

Had English playmaker Marcus Smith had a better night off the tee, England could well have pulled off their first win on New Zealand soil since 2002.

One year later, it was a similar story.

A decidedly second-string French side were expected to be routinely cast aside.

But the tourists, boasting an average of 14 caps per player, pushed the All Blacks to the brink with a 74th^-minute Beauden Barrett penalty needed to seal the tense 31-27 victory.

Those recent results speak to the All Blacks’ struggles to immediately gel following their respective Super Rugby campaigns.

Learning calls, refreshing combinations, absorbing new game plans and tactics often takes time.

While France are again missing many of their leading players, with the Top 14 finalists from Toulouse and Montpellier unavailable for national selection, this week’s squad is significantly bolstered – compared to last year – by the presence of 11 players from back-to-back European champions Bordeaux.

That contingent includes Matthieu Jalibert and Maxime Lucu, who are expected to combine as the starting halves combination, midfielders Yoram Moefana and Nicolas Depoortere, classy wing Damian Penaud, hooker Maxime Lamothe and loose forward Marko Gazzotti.

French coach Fabien Galthié also had the benefit of giving his squad valuable game time in a pre-tour victory against a decent English XV side two weeks ago.

Rennie, meanwhile, has 10 days – six on-field trainings – to imprint his mark on the All Blacks for the first test in four years in Christchurch.

Striking the delicate balancing act between building connections, sharing enough detail but not overloading players, and attempting to form cohesive combinations is not easy amid the widespread upheaval the All Blacks have endured since their last test in November.

From attack to defence, skills to fitness, Rennie’s All Blacks have an almost entirely new management team – other than forwards coach Jason Ryan – to bring together.

And there are four rookies – Fehi Fineanganofo, Josh Moorby, Xavier Numia and Anton Segner – to integrate.

That process started with a non-Super Rugby finalists camp and continued when Rennie’s All Blacks squad first assembled in Auckland last week.

Despite such a compressed runway before confronting France in their opening Nations Championship assignment, All Blacks assistant coach Neil Barnes made his expectations clear.

“That can be an issue, but we’re an All Black team.

“We’ve got standards to live up to so we’re aiming to be arriving on Saturday fully prepared and ready to go. There will be no excuses,” Barnes said as the All Blacks trained at Christ’s College on Tuesday.

“It’s been all go. Jason [Ryan] did warn me about it being a machine that didn’t stop moving. We’ve had a fair bit of content in our days but we’ve got really good people.

“I’ve been really impressed with how quick the uptake has been and how quickly our game is progressing.

“You’re dealing with a different standard of player here. You have to coach a little bit differently too. They have a lot more ownership. My job is guiding.

“It’s been a long time coming. There’s been a lot of work to get here. Our whole coaching group is coming together well, so the cohesion is getting higher and higher as the week progresses.”

The All Blacks will attempt to blend experience and established Super Rugby combinations, such as the Hurricanes playmaking axis of Cam Roigard, Ruben Love and Jordie Barrett, and Chiefs locks Tupou Vaa’i and Josh Lord, to enhance cohesion.

While setting high expectations from the outset, the straight-shooting Barnes acknowledged the All Blacks will improve from this weekend’s starting point.

“Our job is to add to what’s been there in the past and not be happy with where we were.

“We’ll fine-tune things to make us better and better all the time.

“We want to get back to the top. We want to win a World Cup, but we won’t be doing it in one week, so we’ll chip away.”

Having lived through the All Blacks coaching changes, and after a horror Super Rugby final with the Chiefs, Damian McKenzie is one figure keen to seize the test season as a chance to reshape the narrative around his form.

“You’ve got to move on pretty quickly from Super into All Blacks mode,” McKenzie said.

“There’s an expectation that you get into your books and learn your stuff quickly. We were able to do that last week so we can hit the ground running this week.

“There’s different personnel in terms of coaches and they bring their different style, different flavour, to the environment.

“The boys are loving it. We’ve learned a lot and we’ve had to learn quickly as well.”

Nine Top 14 finalists will join France for their second test in Australia next week, and therefore miss the All Blacks, but Barnes dismissed the notion that Les Bleus are vastly understrength.

“They’re one of the best teams in the world. They’ll bring everything.

“I’m not buying into this rubbish that they’re bringing over a B team or anything like that,” Barnes said.

“They’ve got great depth in their country and we’ve got to applaud them for what they’ve created.

“I don’t care who they bring. It’s a French team. They’ll be able to play. They’ll be physical, and we’re going to have to be at our very best to beat them.”

Liam Napier is a senior sports journalist and rugby correspondent for the NZ Herald. He is a co-host of the Rugby Direct podcast.