France captain Thierry Dusautoir has the utmost respect for his New Zealand counterpart Richie McCaw, but still plans to wreck celebrations for the flanker’s 100th cap today.
McCaw, who has been voted world player of the year three times, will be the first All Black to reach the milestone when the World Cup hosts take on the French in a pivotal Pool A encounter at Eden Park.
“He has been the best flanker in the world for 10 years now,” Dusautoir said at the French team hotel yesterday. “I think he has one year less experience than me, yet I have only half the caps.”
Photo: AFP
“So I can just respect this guy because he leads the All Blacks really well and he’s still a great player. I’m sad because we are going to waste his party tomorrow,” he added.
Dusautoir scored his country’s opening try and made 38 tackles when they knocked the All Blacks out of the quarter-finals of the 2007 World Cup.
That was one of two stunning reverses in the knockout stages of rugby’s showpiece event, the other came in 1999, that have made the New Zealanders so wary of France.
Photo: Reuters
Dusautoir said the Cardiff match in 2007 was one of the toughest he had ever played in and expected a similar standard today at a stadium where the All Blacks have not lost since the French triumphed in 1994.
“I’ve never played a game like this again, but it was physical and tough mentally because it was a quarter-final at a World Cup,” the 29-year-old said.
“I’m sure that tomorrow[today] is going to be a similar game and I hope we can win again,” he added.
Dusautoir also captained France when they beat a weakened All Blacks team in Dunedin in 2009, experiences which coach Marc Lievremont said would hold his players in good stead today.
“It probably does help the French team, given that there are a few members of this team that have beaten the All Blacks before,” he said. “So they know it is possible to do it. But for the New Zealand team, it probably does not mean so much.”
With the losers of today’s match likely to end up in the weaker half of the draw for the knockout stages, the French have been accused of putting out a weakened side for the highly anticipated match.
Lievremont, who has handed a first start at flyhalf to Morgan Parra, unsurprisingly dismissed the allegation.
“Notwithstanding some of the reports seen in the press, the team really wants to do well in this particular game,” he said. “It is a really important game for us to win.”
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later
RSS