The All Blacks celebrated their 500th Test with a thumping 30-0 win over old rivals France yesterday, which secured victory in their three-Test series.
An astute kicking game laid the groundwork and the All Blacks powered home after an early try to Julian Savea, and two crowd-pleasing scores in the second half from Ben Smith and Beauden Barrett.
New Zealand’s 378th victory in 500 internationals, which makes them one of the most successful teams in all sports, follows last week’s 23-13 win in Auckland and gives them an unassailable 2-0 series lead with a game to spare.
Photo: Reuters
“I’m extremely happy,” All Blacks captain Kieran Read said. “The effort we put in in defense really showed the character we have got. It’s not easy on a [wet] night like this and the boys really stepped up.”
The home team led 10-0 at halftime and added 20 points in the second period, while France, who ran New Zealand close last week, finished scoreless against them for the first time.
“Unfortunately we couldn’t score any points tonight. They played very well, with great defense,” France skipper Thierry Dusautoir said. “We’re hoping to do the maximum to fight back in order to win that one Test. There’s one Test left, so we’re going to do the maximum to win.”
The renowned flair of France made them a threat when they had an opportunity to run with the ball, but their opportunities were few, because they were continually forced into a defensive game by an All Blacks aerial bombardment.
All Blacks coach Steve Hansen had demanded an improvement on the stumbling first Test win in Auckland a week ago and the team took notice.
Before a capacity crowd of 21,000 who braved chilly, wet conditions, they were a far more settled unit the second time around against their 2011 World Cup final opponents.
Read and Liam Messam lead an effective nullifying of the French strength at the breakdown, and the scrum held its own despite the addition of Nicolas Mas into the French front row.
However, it was the kicking game, so wayward a week ago, that produced the result as France were kept pinned deep in their own half.
Their best opportunity to breach the All Blacks defense came early in the second half when a series of pick-and-goes, and half-breaks by Wesley Fofana and Yohann Huget, took them through 17 phases inside the All Blacks 22.
However, when the move eventually broke down, the All Blacks showed their game was not all about kicking and triggered a length-of-the-field counterattack that ended with a try to Ben Smith under the posts.
It was their kicking that engineered their first try in the third minute of the game, when they drilled France into a corner.
Sam Whitelock stole the defensive lineout from debutant Bernard le Roux and a delicately weighted grubber kick from center Ma’a Nonu allowed Savea to scamper over for the try.
Despite a superior territory advantage, the All Blacks had to wait 15 minutes and at a rare moment when they were inside their own 22 to set up their next points.
A Frederic Michalak penalty attempt bounced off the upright into the arms of Read, playing his 50th Test, and the All Blacks captain swatted aside tacklers in a 50m run upfield.
When he was lowered, a Cruden kick took the All Blacks up to the line where the desperately defending France conceded a penalty, which the flyhalf converted into three points.
For the rest of the half, the defending France, led by the hard-hitting Dusautoir, “the Dark Destroyer,” kept the All Blacks at bay.
The big France push at the start of the second half came unstuck when out of frustration at not being able to breach the All Blacks defense they reverted to a drop-goal attempt, only for Sam Cane to charge down Michalak’s kick.
The All Blacks recovered the ball, with Savea leading the break downfield and sending Ben Smith over for the try.
Cruden added two further penalties before the All Blacks’ final try, another breakout effort from their own line started by Rene Ranger and finished under the posts by replacement Beauden Barrett after a delicious offload from Cruden.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier