A valiant XV of France stood up to New Zealand but lost 31-27 on Saturday in Dunedin during the first of the three matches of the summer tour, far from the promised humiliation.
Widely altered, without the majority of their so-called “premium” players, and with five novices in their group, the Blues fell with the honors against New Zealand this Saturday in Dunedin (31-27), for the first match of this summer tour against the All Blacks. At the end of the meeting, the French coach Fabien Galkié said at the microphone of Canal +: “I have not yet spoken to the players, they are recovering in the locker room. We will have time to analyze the match and prepare for the second test match. Marc Lièvremont commented on the match and I greet him because the last to have won here is him. They inspired us a lot. We tried to prepare as they had done in 2009. Players believe in it, they believe in their chances, they believe in them. You have to shoot the players and the staff who prepared this match. We haven’t finished. We have two games to play and we will prepare for this second appointment. ”
The technician adds that “When you play All Blacks, you always play with humility and respect. But that forces us to get the best out of ourselves. We were not far from touching the best of ourselves. We have a match ball at the right time. I hope it will inspire the group for the future. We’re going to fight to prepare for the next game. (…) There have been many turning point in this match, positive and negative. They have three trials refused on video arbitration. We were effective on our possessions. We were consistent with our strategy. The players believed in them. They must continue to believe in them. These two weeks … We have entered a rather special tunnel and we have to take the maximum opportunity, pleasure and happiness to be there now, to live these three games and then we will see. But we’re going to fight! ”
Novices, we did not throw them in the main bath, we have prepared them well
Fabien Garthié
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Fabien Galkié also returned to the good performance of his highly revised and rejuvenated group. “The novices, we did not throw them in the deep end, we prepared them well. Since the end of the dam, we have recovered players eliminated from the dams, we went to prepare in England, we won on the last action. We prepared in a coherent way. For the new ones, it was a leap into the unknown and I hope that they will capitalize and that they want to progress and still wear the jersey of the XV of France. ”
At a press conference, the tricolor coach then added: “We have a match ball at the end three minutes, that’s what we wanted. But to get a match ball at the very end, you have to hold 77 minutes in front of them. This is what we managed to do, with weak times, difficult times, times when we folded, sometimes we broke. But we stayed until the end of the match within reach of victory. It’s almost perfect. “
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XV of France: Bulldozer Guillard, Les Éclairs d’Etissogbe … The notes of the Blues after the short defeat against the All Blacks
And project: “We still have two weeks to live and two test matches to play (…) We will prepare for this second test match with the same intensity. Both psychological, rugby, physical and collective. “ He identified as an improvement axis “The second balloons” After the candles or the references, where the Blues did not succeed enough to take the ascendant in the second period.
