Ian Foster: 'We’ve got to find another pathway for us now'

FINDING A NEW WAY: New Zealand head coach Ian Foster and his side will have to find another pathway to winning the Webb Ellis Cup. Pic: Harry Murphy/Sportsfile

The All Blacks have vowed to bounce back from their first ever pool defeat in a World Cup and follow South Africa’s lead in 2019 by going on to lift the Webb Ellis after losing their opening game.

The Springboks fell to an opening loss to New Zealand in 2019 but regrouped and All Blacks head coach Ian Foster said they can do something similar after going down to France on Friday night.

“I don’t think we have to rebuild. Stats are stats, I understand all that. But in the past we have won all our pool games but not won the tournament, and our goal is to win the tournament. This was always going to be massive, we know how strong France are.

“You saw ambition from us and whenever we had the opportunity to play, we were pretty efficient at taking it. But they denied us opportunities to attack them in their half. It was frustrating that some of the pictures we painted for the ref at scrum were penalised and perhaps they were painting slightly different pictures and getting away with it.

“There were some good lessons for us. We fired some good bullets, we just didn’t fire enough.”

"Playing France here in the opening game was pretty special but they were just a bit too good. We’ve got to find another pathway for us now,” he said.

They will face Uruguay, Italy and Namibia along the way in the pool and Ireland now know that if they beat South Africa then they are set to play the All Blacks, rather than France in Stade de France, in the quarter-finals.

Full-back Beauden Barrett said the opening loss should not have a huge impact on their tournament provided they learn from it.

“It won’t change much if we both earn the right to be in the quarter-final. What we’ve got to take from this game is the learnings, but also keep believing because we did a lot of good things out there tonight and after 60 minutes the game is on a knife-edge.

"The French certainly rode their wave of home support. The atmosphere was fantastic and a great way to start the tournament at a home World Cup.” 

Out-half Richie Mo’unga said that while New Zealand had never lost a pool game, they will not panic.

“We know World Cups are challenging but it doesn’t all rely on the first game. That result is obviously not ideal for us, but we can only take what we can out of it now. We will have a really good look at ourselves and where we went wrong. That will be very hard to do but we need to if we want to go further.

“We put a lot of pressure on them and there was a lot we were really happy with. Sometimes it was just the bounce of the ball and I felt we were a bit hard done by with a few calls that allowed them to get momentum.

“When you look at the amount of opportunities we had in that game, we are just gutted about the way we let France back into the game when we had all the pressure,” he said.

French coach Fabien Galthié said that dealing with the intense heat in Stade de France, the atmosphere and the expectation as host nation, were all challenges that they manage to deal with.

"We didn't expect this atmosphere. It was very tense, even in the stands. We're not used to this kind of atmosphere. At the end of the day, it's a heavy score in our favour.

"It was important to get off to a good start after all the work we've put in preparing for this match. We were under a lot of pressure in the first half, and we found it hard to break free.

"They scored very early, rather easily. Then we lost Julien Marchand. We started the match in the worst possible way - but that’s all part of the game.

“We got a bit caught up in the atmosphere. But we went into the dressing room in front, thanks to our discipline.

"Then in the second half, our finishers enabled us to regain control of the match, but not immediately. Again, they scored from our mistakes when we could have done better.

"But we won the arm-wrestle. That enabled us to keep in touch with New Zealand, particularly in our weaker moments, and then meant we regained control of the second half, and also meant Thomas Ramos could keep us in touch with his kicking,” said the French coach.