On the morning after the night before, as the rubbish from the night's partying was swept off the Cardiff streets, bewildered Kiwi fans tried to make sense of it all and France's players larked about in the atrium of their hotel, the French attempted, against the odds, to play down what their team had achieved late the previous evening.
With a semi-final against their old nemesis England next, there was no room for the complacency that followed Les Bleus' previous great World Cup upset in 1999 even though the fall guys were again the tournament favourites, the All Blacks, and again France had forged an incredible triumph against the odds. "With England, we know what to expect," said the France coach, Bernard Laporte. "They liquidated the Australian forwards. Australia had to play going backwards for the first time, with slow ball."
"I saw a forward pack of huge ability, a side with the ability to get out of their territory. I wasn't surprised at the result. England have all it takes. We have never said that England are a bad side. They have had a hard time for a year because of a lot of injuries but have always had good players. It won't be easy but what World Cup semi-final ever is? It will be 50-50. It always is."
"We didn't party last night, not in the way we did in 1999," said Jo Maso, the team manager. "We just had a bite to eat and some of the boys then came in a bit late but after a night game you never want to sleep anyway. It was completely different from in 1999 when there was a real sense of relaxation. Then, we went out into London, had a drink in a restaurant someone knew. After that it was incredibly hard to lift the team again. There was a sense that they had won their final."
The echoes of the incredible comeback at Twickenham in 1999 were impossible to avoid. Again France had come back from being well down against the All Blacks having been written off beforehand. "The context is the same but this is different," said Fabien Pelous, a veteran of 1999. "This year we had more going for us, we knew what we wanted whereas in 1999 we hadn't said we were going to do anything.
"This year, we said loudly that we want to be world champions. In 1999, that game was won in a state of euphoria; this one was structured, in that we knew we wouldn't play much, we would occupy territory. We got away with it: if we played that match again, five times out of six we would lose it."
France rode their luck: a scrabbled tackle by Jean-Baptiste Elissalde as Nick Evans broke the line late on, a hint of a forward pass in Yannick Jauzion's vital try, a referee in Wayne Barnes who penalised Richie McCaw early enough at the breakdown to set the tone for the whole game; a Lionel Beauxis conversion that went in off the post. Those were the might-have-beens; what was certain was how deep France had dug within themselves to make their own luck.
The physical price was obvious as they filed into the Cardiff night: a livid scar from forehead to cheek and black eye for Pelous, similar shiners for Beauxis and Jauzion. As early as the fifth minute, Serge Betsen had been knocked cold by Pelous's knee in a tackle on Joe Rokocoko, although England should note that he is likely to be fit to prey on his former victim Jonny Wilkinson this Saturday, tests permitting.
The plan had been for France to keep in touch by occupying All Black territory with booming kicks from Beauxis and Damien Traille, the latter playing out of position at full-back. They enjoyed limited success in the first half, with Daniel Carter simply replying in kind, and no real platform from the line-out. But what France did create was a virtually impenetrable wall of dark blue shirts whenever New Zealand went forward.
Their tackle count nudged 200 for the evening, with Thierry Dusautoir accounting for some 30 of those. Two and three-man tackles muzzled New Zealand's ability to offload the ball rapidly while the France defence coach David Ellis had masterminded a rugby league-style approach in which the first tackler went high, the second low, to prevent the ball from being pushed away.
Mentally, this was a different France from the nervous bunch who had been shoved around by Argentina four weeks earlier, and who had taken so long to get on top of Ireland. The tone was set by the response to the haka, with the team wearing red, white or blue T-shirts and lining up in a tricolour formation at the suggestion of Betsen.
The eyeballing as the French line approached - in some cases - within a couple of metres during the ritual had such aggressive intent that a brawl seemed imminent. But it was contained, as French discipline barely faltered through the evening, particularly when New Zealand adopted a slow, close-range pick and go in the final, vital 10 minutes, when their two...#8209;point lead meant that defeat was only a penalty or a drop-goal away.
The common line from the captain Raphaël Ibanez downwards was that the seemingly impossible had been achieved through adversity. "It's down to you: you wrote us off," said Cédric Heymans, pointing at a journalist. There was a shared desire to salvage something from the first-night wreckage, two tough pool games to forge some steel while the All Blacks waltzed past Scotland seconds and a dozing Italy. But as several Frenchmen pointed out amid the euphoria, England have come down a similarly rocky road.
New Zealand MacDonald: Rokocoko, Muliaina, McAlister, Sivivatu; Carter (Evans, 56; Toeva, 71), Kelleher (Leonard, 56); Woodcock, Oliver (Hore, 56), Hayman, Robinson (Jack, 50), Williams, Collins (Masoe, 63), McCaw (capt), So'oialo.
Tries McAlister, So'oialo. Con Carter. Pens Carter 2.
Sin-bin McAlister 46.
France Traille; Clerc, Marty, Jauzion, Heymans (Dominici, 69); Beauxis (Michalak, 68), Elissalde; Milloud (Poux, h-t), Ibanez (capt; Szarzewski, 52), De Villiers, Pelous (Chabal, 52), Thion, Betsen (Harinordoquy, 5), Dusautoir, Bonnaire.
Tries Dusautoir, Jauzion. Cons Beauxis, Elissalde. Pens Beauxis 2.
Referee W Barnes (Eng). Attendance 71, 669.