Does either side know their history?

Cup opener a chance to surprise

How well do the French and All Blacks know their history?

The team that wants to win the most may find that looking to the past for inspiration could provide a plan to take into next week's Rugby World Cup opener in Paris that gives them the game's winning.

France goes into the Paris cauldron with the weight of their nation on their shoulders.

Their opponents, the three-time Webb Ellis Trophy champions, the All Blacks, are coming into the game off the back of a record 7-35 thumping and under pressure to get their act back together against one of the best French sides of modern history.

Yet, the last time they hosted the World Cup, France lost their opening game 17-12 against an Argentine team that finished third in the tournament, beating France for the second time, 34-10 in the playoff for third and fourth.

But this French side is a better team than that of 2007.

So how do the All Blacks go about beating them?

They need only look to history to learn how to unsettle the French.

On two classic occasions, when the All Blacks had their backs to the wall, they introduced tactics that knocked France entirely off their game.

The first was in 1967, and the second 10 years later.

Brian Lochore's 1967 team had swept all before them on their shorter-than-usual tour, which was put together in a hurry after New Zealand refused an invitation to tour South Africa without Māori players. They were only denied the first Grand Slam by an All Blacks team because Ireland wouldn't let them into the country after an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in England during the tour.

However, they knew France represented one of their toughest challenges on the tour.

The night before the game, the little general who was the manager on tour, C.K. 'Charlie' Saxton, had a yarn with coach Fred Allen. Colin Meads related the story in Behind the Silver Fern.

"They reckoned the French lineout was going to clean us out. There was Benoit Dauga, Alain Plantefol and Walter Spanghero, and all these players.

"Charlie had this belief that we had to confuse the French. If you played the way they were used to playing you, you wouldn't cope. We were having our team talk when they came through and told us what we were going to do.

"They got it so that [hooker] Bruce McLeod [wings were still throwing the ball in then] would stand on the five-metre mark, and the No.2 person went back five yards, and you would have a huge gap there, and just have your normal lineouts from there.

"You just threw the ball to the middle of the lineout to Sam Strahan or we could all have a jump at it."

In discussing the plan, Meads said one of the players suggested only doing it outside their 22-metre area. When they were back on defence, they reverted to their normal lineout.

"We hadn't practised it or anything. It was shock tactics. The French didn't know what to do. They were arguing and squawking and going on. It worked. It took them more than halfway through the game to work it out.

"We would go back to marking them in their lineouts and give them hell and get a bit of their ball."

Meads said it was a ploy used by the 1945-46 Kiwis team that Saxton captained after World War Two.

"That was Charlie, he was a great thinker of the game. He was the first manager we had who took a big part in how you played."

The result? New Zealand won a famous 21-15 victory.

Ten years later, New Zealand was on their first separate tour of France, and after everything was done to make life uncomfortable for them, on and off the field, they were soundly beaten in the first Test 18-13.

The French pack was huge and often knocked the All Blacks around with illegal tactics.

Wing Stu Wilson said, "The key thing was the forward pack had to admit we got smashed in the first Test, and it took a bit for guys like Frank Oliver to admit that."

Looking for something to deny them the same formula for the second Test a week later, flanker Kevin Eveleigh came up with an idea.

Lock Andy Haden said Eveleigh devised a plan, although he wasn't in the playing XV. That was because he was in the same flanker position as the tour captain, Graham Mourie.

Mourie called the Test a 'landmark game'.

"We made a decision to play a very fast game and to have them run rather than engage physically with the French pack. We made sure we opened the lineout up and their hooker stepped across in the middle. Once we'd set the gap, that removed a lot of interference."

Haden also told Behind the Silver Fern, "Lawrie Knight and I and hooker Andy Dalton went to a little park with no room at all, on a petanque rink, and worked out how, between Lawrie and I, we would cover Frank Oliver's situation [he played with broken ribs] with lineouts that sped the game up. We said to the other forwards, 'When there is a lineout, you're not in it.' We were dying for them to kick it out so we could use another lineout ploy. It was pretty innovative at that stage."

Andy Dalton said the French were run off their feet. "The tactics certainly upset their rhythm and they never really got into the game. It was a good win."

Wilson said the team's brain trust came up with hit-and-run tactics, doing everything at speed.

"At half-time we knew we had them beaten because the French boys were blowing like sails in the wind. We'd run them off their feet, with quick lineouts, short lineouts, we didn't piss around in the scrums. As soon as they went down, the ball was in and bang, it was out and off again. I thought 'Hell, you can play this way at the top level, and you can change your game completely in seven days."

The All Blacks won 15-3.