France head coach Fabien Galthie has admitted that his side were not ready for the pressure of their Rugby World Cup opener on home soil, despite beating New Zealand at the Stade de France on Friday night.
The host nation saw their tournament get off to a nightmare start when New Zealand's Mark Telea scored the opening try after just 93 seconds, and things got even worse when Julien Marchand was forced off through injury 13 minutes in.
However, the boot of Thomas Ramos ensured that Les Bleus went into half time with a slender 9-8 lead, before an improved second-half showing saw them eventually run out 27-13 winners.
Tries from Damian Penaud and Melvyn Jaminet helped inflict a first-ever World Cup pool stage defeat on the All Blacks, and Galthie admitted that the win was a "relief" after what he saw as a nervy start.
"We were not expecting it to be so tense, even in the stands. We thought we were ready for that kind of pressure, but we were not," he told reporters after the match.
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There was a lot of pressure in the first half. It took us time to relax and they scored quickly and easily. We lost Marchand early on. It was the worst possible scenario and even if we were ahead at the break, we did not control the game. But then we took back control.
"It will do us the world of good, this win. It is a relief and welcome."
France number eight Gregory Alldritt added: "It was a massive game for our team and I am proud to be French tonight.
"The support was massive and it is just fantastic to get support like this. We are just looking forward to the next game, but we said if we lost today it is not the end of the World Cup.
"But we are not champion now so we just have to keep working and go step by step."
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New Zealand must now traverse unchartered territory having seen their previously-perfect record of 31 wins from 31 group games ended, but they are still heavily fancied to progress from a group that also contains Italy, Namibia and Uruguay.
"It was a hell of an opening match, everything we expected. We fired some good bullets at them, we just didn't fire enough," head coach Ian Foster told reporters.
"It doesn't change much for us, we just have to find another way out of this pool."
France are next in action against Uruguay on Thursday, while New Zealand take on Namibia one day later.
Barney Corkhill
