Dan Carter puts ghosts aside to face ‘final’ with France

Dan Carter had hardly taken his seat for New Zealand’s press conference at the University of Swansea yesterday when he was whisked back to the Millennium Stadium in 2007 when France overcame the All Blacks.

It is a game that remains one of the most famous World Cup encounters of all time.

It is also one that has become ingrained in the national psyche – there was, by way of contrast, no mention of the French win against them in 1999 – with one Gallic inquisitor asking if the current crew were somehow haunted by the “ghosts” of that day eight years ago.

Carter handled it expertly, his polite but pointed declaration that this is a new generation of All Blacks was helped no end by the presence beside him at the time of Sam Cane and Brodie Retallick, both of whom were in their mid-teens that day eight years ago.

“There’s only about three of our players who were out on that field (in 2007) so it’s a new team,” said the out-half. “We’re not looking in the past. We’ve moved on from that. We’re more excited than anything about this next challenge.”

That number is down to two given prop Tony Woodcock has been ruled out of the tournament and replaced by John Moody who joined the squad yesterday. With Richie McCaw over the thigh injury that saw him miss the Tonga game, they have 31 fit players to choose from.

Five of the current French squad also featured in that quarter-final in ’07, but Carter attempted to twist the narrative by claiming France will pitch up with their own motivations given they were somewhat unfortunate to lose to New Zealand in the final four years ago.

That’s all fair enough and yet the reality is that the defeat in Cardiff is the only time in his 11 meetings with them that Carter has lost to the French and the European side will need a renaissance to match that of 2011 if they are to even make the All Blacks blink.

“One of the strengths of the French side is they can flick a switch and turn it on,” said Carter. “You only have to look at the last World Cup when they didn’t have a lot of form in the pool play and then as soon as they hit the play-offs they flipped the switch and were a different team.

“They will be disappointed in the way they played (against Ireland), but they have quality players in their side that can turn the team and that’s the beauty of knock-out rugby. This is our final and it’s the same for them. It’s whichever team turns up on the day will push on.”

It seems unlikely that that will be France. Despite a strong start when they dominated possession and territory against Ireland, they rarely looked to have the wit to break the defensive line though assistant All Black coach Ian Foster was right to zero in on their defence.

“If you look at that game, it was very physical,” said Foster.

“France defended very strongly. They made a good Ireland team work really hard to break them down. They have plenty of passion, very physical men and they deserve the right to be there, too.

“There’s a lot of respect between the two nations for each other. They are a very proud country with a proud history. They have done extremely well at Rugby World Cups so we’re under no illusions as to how tough this is going to be.”

Neither are France, you would imagine.