How All Blacks were stunned by reborn France

Dave Ellis, France’s English defence coach: I missed out on selection for the coaching team for the Lions tour in 2005, but I was called up by Graham Henry and Steve Hansen to help the All Blacks. I picked up things that I stored for 2007. We knew we had to come up with something they’d never seen.

Richie McCaw, New Zealand captain: It’s all wrong. We’ve lost the toss for our usual dressing room, lost the toss for our usual hotel in Cardiff, lost the toss for our black strip and lost the toss for the kick-off.

As the All Blacks do the haka, the French players take off their tracksuits to reveal red, white and blue T-shirts. They then eyeball the All Blacks.

David: Before the game against Argentina, Laporte got Clément Poitrenaud to read out a letter that [teenage French resistance fighter] Guy Môquet had written to his mother before he was executed by the Nazis. Sarkozy wanted this letter put in every classroom in France. There was too much emotion, but after the game the players went into a bar and drank. It was rebellion. They decided to take the World Cup into their own hands.

Ellis: Serge Betsen came to me and said we need to do something. I said: “These are your colours.” We had red and white training T-shirts, so I said: “Get on to Nike and get eight blue ones.” They went out in their tracksuits for the anthems. Then, when they took them off, I’ve never seen a stadium light up with cameras. The All Blacks are extremely well prepared, so you have to do things to rock the boat. I said to Serge: “This will be total shock.” From then you could feel something special was going to happen.

Betsen was knocked out cold after four minutes and New Zealand led 13-3 at the break through Luke McAlister’s try and Dan Carter’s boot.

Ellis: Our tactic in the first half was not to play. Every time we get the ball we were to kick it back. If we could lull them into a false sense of security, we had a chance.

McCaw: I say something to assistant coach Steve Hansen at half-time. He’s never heard me say anything like it before. “I can’t get into this game. Don’t know why, but I just can’t seem to catch hold of it.”

Ellis: In the second half we stopped tackling by the legs. Instead, we did two-man tackles and targeted the ball, not the carrier, what’s now known as the choke tackle. They had to send in extra men. Before you knew it they had five men in the ruck, a third of the team. We eliminated their width and frustrated them. Richie McCaw was lost.

The tide turns as McAlister is sent to the sin-bin and Thierry Dusautoir scores a converted try that makes it 13-13. Carter limps off and Evans replaces him.

Evans: Carter had been struggling all week with his ankle and got another knock. They had momentum but then we went down the other end and Rodney So’oialo scored a try for us.

McAlister misses the conversion. The score is 18-13 with 18 minutes left. Then Damien Traille’s pass, under pressure from McCaw, appears to go forward. Wayne Barnes, the referee, does not think so. Frédéric Michalak gallops forward and passes to Yannick Jauzion, who scores. Jean-Baptiste Elissalde kicks the winning conversion.

Evans: They scored the infamous forward-pass try and that’s when I tore my hamstring chasing them. My World Cup was over no matter what.

McCaw: Barnes might have been obscured, but Jonathan Kaplan (assistant referee), so keen to assert himself in the first half, says nothing. The pass has to be forward.

Ellis: In the last ten minutes the All Blacks went through 47 phases, but they had lost control. We made 229 tackles and missed 15. Over half our team made more than 26 tackles.

Evans: It felt like the crowd went silent. I looked at the scoreboard and thought, “Is that actually 20-18? Have the All Blacks lost?”

Anton Oliver, All Blacks hooker: There’s a sort of desolate decay and the smell of death.”

David: I think it was worth another 100,000 sales. I was very happy and very worried. Immediately afterwards the Sarkozy circus started. He was in the dressing room with his clique. Johnny Hallyday (French singer) was banging on the door trying to get in. The signals of failure for the England game were already there.

Evans: I went out of the changing room to call the old man. That’s when I heard the team manager trying to work out flights. They had nothing organised. No one expected us to lose.

Ellis: We went to a nightclub in Cardiff and Wayne Barnes came in. He was concerned about the try. I told him it looked like McCaw got his hand under and touched it. I said I’d have been very upset if he’d called a forward pass.

Evans: The family guys and big dogs went home first and some of us stayed at Heathrow and watched the homecoming on TV. There was a massive crowd. It was weird. We got a pat on the back when really we wanted a kick up the a***.

France lost 14-9 to England in the World Cup semi-final at the Stade de France a week later. By October, Laporte was the secretary of state for sport. After a review in New Zealand, Graham Henry was controversially reappointed All Blacks coach. Four years later New Zealand beat France 8-7 in the World Cup final.

David: The 2007 team were Six Nations champions and won in Cape Town. It’s hard to believe this time.

Ellis: If it was England, Wales or Ireland, you could draw a line in the sand and say the All Blacks will win, but with France there is always a question mark. There has to be one good game in this team and that must be terrifying for the All Blacks. Evans: I was thinking the All Blacks would win easily because the French were not going off script, but then I hear they are throwing the bloody coach out and I’m more worried now.