‘France should be worried’
Are the Black Ferns the underdogs as they face France in a Rugby World Cup semifinal at Auckland’s Eden Park this Saturday?
They’ve lost their last four matches against the French – two in 2018 and two on last year’s infamous end-of-year-tour.
So if you look at the matchup purely through the lens of recent results, you would have to say so.
Black Ferns co-captain Ruahai Demant admitted as much when the question was put to her yesterday at the team hotel in Auckland.
But first, she hesitated.
And when she was then asked about whether the underdog tag was one she was comfortable claiming, she had quite the response.
‘‘If you were in the position that my team is in right now, how would you feel, if this was your last game, potentially? Would you think that you were an underdog?’’
The Black Ferns team Demant has around her four weeks into a World
Cup on home soil is vastly different from the one soundly beaten by England and France last year.
Their philosophies on attack and defence are completely different after being overhauled under the guidance of Wayne Smith, who replaced Glenn Moore as coach this year. They’ve won 10 matches on the trot while scoring 479 points and conceding only 79.
And they’ll have the support of the vast majority of the 40,000-strong crowd expected at Eden Park for Saturday’s doubleheader, which starts with the other semifinal between England and Canada.
So even though France will be a massive step up from any of the opponents the Black Ferns have faced this year, there could only be one answer to Demant’s question.
They don’t think they are the underdogs and if they find themselves preparing for a third and fourth playoff next weekend instead of a final and a shot at a sixth world title, it will be disappointing in the extreme.
The assessment as to who is the favourite and who is the underdog might be different next week if they do end up facing England, who are expected to extend their record winning streak to a 30th match this weekend. But no-one in the Black Ferns camp is looking that far ahead, least of all Demant, who played in three of those four losses to France, including the two last November.
She said the team had ‘‘evolved in so many ways’’ since then, most of all with regard to their mindset with ball in hand.
‘‘It doesn’t matter what part of the field that we’re in, whether or not we’ve absorbed a lot on defence, we want to try and get seven points, get five points out of any opportunity that we get. ‘‘To do that takes courage. Not every team does that. It’s quite easy to get into quite a traditional mindset of ‘you need territory, you need possession to win a game of footie’, and you do, but not all the time – you just need the ball.’’
The Black Ferns clearly take a lot of pride in their approach, which contrasts sharply with France’s focus on defence and England’s maul-heavy attacking game plan.
Demant noted that they’re ‘‘not like any other team’’ and said France ‘‘should be worried’’ about how much New Zealand had changed over the last 12 months.
It has been just over six months since Smith was parachuted in to lead the Black Ferns to this World Cup and Demant said they had come a long way.
‘‘You can’t compare the first training that we had with Smithy to now.
‘‘Even after this morning’s training, with the quality of some of the drills that we were doing – the accuracy that we were executing them with was probably the best we’ve ever had and that’s exactly what you want this week.’’