Friday night matches in Paris are familiar fare for Guinness Six Nations teams and their fans, but last night’s game between France and reigning World Champions New Zealand was a few notches above anything the northern suburb of Saint-Denis has witnessed in rugby and meteorological terms.

Having been present in the ice, snow the and cutting winds that sweep down Rue Henri Delaunay on February Fridays past, the contrasting twenty-nine degrees temperatures at kick off is much more acceptable.

Sadly France’s injury situation prevented me from using the sound bite “Danty’s Inferno” at every available opportunity but as an author you learn to take the rough with the smooth.

Obtaining a ticket at Stade de France was rarer than a hen’s tooth sprinkled with gold dust. Even in in my line of work there were over 1800 applicants for media accreditation, three times the available capacity of 600.

Those 80,000 plus souls who managed to get in witnessed quite a night.

Paris is a sporting utopia over the next twelve months, if you somehow manage to avoid the posters and billboards of RWC 2023 then the Paris 2024 Olympic baseball caps, key rings, badges that greet you at every shop will certainly remind you that the French capital is in full sporting mode.

The opening ceremony involved a lot of baguette throwing before Sir Bill Beaumont relived his French CSE oral exam, leading to a booing which descended into a grunt when President Macron headed to the mic to declare the tournament open.

Finally the Rugby began and within two minutes the hosts were lined up behind their own goal line after a well worked try from Mark Telea.

The boot of Thomas Ramos clicked away to give France a nervy 9-8 half time lead.

The second half started like the first with a try from Telea after 43 minutes but that was the final All Black scoring act of the match.

Ramos continued to kick like a mule and two tries from Damian Penaud and Melvyn Jaminet gave France a 27-13 victory.

The win lifts a huge amount of pressure off France, for the next few weeks at least and allows them the luxury of squad management in the next matches against Uruguay and Namibia.

Les Bleus clunked through the gears at times last night but they were chauffeured by 80,000 back seat drivers on a memorable night in Paris.