New Zealand edged out France 34-32 in a breathless start to the inaugural Nations Championship.<\/p>\n
France stunned the All Blacks as Damian Penaud scored the opening try less than 90 seconds into the match in Christchurch, with home woes amplified as Ruben Love was sin-binned for a high tackle.<\/p>\n
But even a man down, New Zealand replied through Will Jordan and once back to full strength, they took a 12-10 lead with a slick move finished off by Peter Lakai.<\/p>\n
Maxime Lucu’s penalty gave France the edge once more but the first half ended with Cam Roigard surging through a gap for New Zealand\u2019s second try.<\/p>\n
The teams traded blows at the start of the second half \u2013 three minutes after Antoine Hastoy\u2019s try, Roigard got his second, then Theo Attissogbe\u2019s 59th-minute score for France was followed by Jordan completing his brace.<\/p>\n
That put New Zealand 34-25 clear, but Matthieu Jalibert ensured a tense finish when he crashed over in the 78th minute.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile an impressive Japan equalled their biggest ever win over Italy as they opened the Nations Championship with a 27-10 win in Tokyo.<\/p>\n
Italy struck first as Juan Ignacio Brex scored the opening try just five minutes in, converted by Paolo Garbisi, but it proved a false dawn as Japan – Ireland’s opponents next week – soon took control, looking stronger in almost every facet of the game.<\/p>\n
Warner Dearns’ levelled to scores before Takuro Matsunaga added a second, then kicking a 25th-minute penalty which put Japan 17-7 up.<\/p>\n
The first half ended with a Garbisi penalty to trim the deficit, but Japan were quickly back in business early in the second half as Ben Gunter went over in the 47th minute.<\/p>\n
Matsunaga added a second penalty in the 67th minute to essentially settle the match, and the only disappointment for Japan was they could not find another try for a bonus point as they were held up on the line in the final seconds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Zealand edged out France 34-32 in a breathless start to the inaugural Nations Championship. France stunned the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-532601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}