Another game of two halves
Read rues incomplete performance
Close but no cigar. The All Blacks captain didn’t get his complete performance in the November test opener against the French, but it was close.
Kieran Read, who left the contest early in the second half with a minor groin strain, felt the All Blacks had threatened to meet his challenge at pre-match captain’s run to deliver an ‘‘80-minute performance’’ in their Armistice Day 38-18 victory at the Stade de France.
Read and his men were sublime in the first 40, running in four converted tries en route to a 31-5 halftime lead that rivalled Sydney and Albany for the best opening spells of the season. But, unlike that home clash against the Boks, the All Blacks were guilty of letting their foot off the throat.
A buoyant France side rattled off 13 unanswered points early in the second spell to re-enter the contest, before the All Blacks’ rearguard kicked in, and they were wrapped things up with the final try and an 11th straight victory over the French with plenty to spare.
‘‘It wasn’t a complete performance but I was really happy with our first half,’’ said Read. ‘‘The way we turned up and showed some good skills in pretty testing conditions in a place where the crowd tested us in different ways in terms of atmosphere ... it was a great first half.
‘‘The lesson is how do you keep going? It’s hard in sport when you’re up by that many points to mentally keep yourself at a high standard. We probably dropped off a touch.
‘‘But I’m really proud of the fight. We defended well. The French had all that possession in the second half ... test matches aren’t going to go your way the whole time. We had to deal with a lot of defence in the second half and did that well.’’
Read was asked what it was like in front of 81,000 French fans when their team grabs what seems to be unstoppable momentum.
‘‘We probably helped them stay on a roll. We allowed them to keep that momentum through our illdiscipline in the second half. When teams are getting on that roll it’s about stopping it with a good shot, or our own discipline of holding the ball and putting pressure on them.
‘‘For a long period we couldn’t do that. It’s a lesson from that second half, about not getting too over-aroused when we’re defending and try and keep calm.’’
Fullback Damian McKenzie felt the All Blacks shouldn’t gloss over their standout first half, even if it was important to digest what had gone wrong after halftime.
‘‘In that first half we did the simple things really well. In conditions where it was a bit wet to still score five tries shows how good our skillset was under pressure.
‘‘You can always take the learnings round that second half round how we can adapt. We did
that at times through our defence. We’ll take the positives and learn through that second half what we can work on for this week coming.’’
There were certainly positives. The scrum had moments of pure dominance, and Beauden Barrett and Rieko Ioane showed their class. It was also a pretty good test
for the Ryan Crotty-Sonny Bill Williams midfield combination till Williams had that brainsnap in the second spell, and was binned.
‘‘In the first half it seemed like
we got some real clean pill to play with, we were playing at the right end and the boys were working well to set our shape,’’ added Crotty.
‘‘in the second half we struggled to get it going. That was a bit of illdiscipline. They seemed to mess a bit of our ball up at breakdown and set-piece time.’’