Which provides Kiwis with a chance for a little happiness insurance before Sunday.
If the All Blacks lose, your Monday morning could be a touch depressing once you have thrown the Herald in the rubbish without reading it and removed the remote from the hole it made in your television set after you threw it the night before.
But with the French at such huge money to win just a few bucks on them as insurance makes sense.
If the All Blacks win you may not really care about, say, $25 thrown away on the French. In fact, if the All Blacks win most of us won't care about much at all for a little while.
But if they (or should that be we) lose, a $200 winning return might come in handy. Especially if you need to start looking for a new television.
The All Blacks should win, and win comfortably, and the idea of taking an insurance bet might seem unpalatable to most of us.
Yet none of us likes paying car insurance either, but it sure makes the day after your car gets stolen a lot more tolerable.
The TAB and bookmakers worldwide will expect at least some money for the French from punters who already have the All Blacks going for big results.
Among the highest prices offered for the All Blacks since Cup betting opened four years ago was the $2.60 offered by Irish bookies Paddy Power nearly two years ago when Dan Carter first developed injury problems.
And thousands of small-time New Zealand punters have multi-leg sports bets ending with an All Black World Cup win, so they can afford to take a little insurance to make sure the game results in a profit - if not of the heart, then at least of the wallet.
With the All Blacks so short at the TAB most of the betting options supporting them are hardly worth backing so the best value could be France to score less than 10.5 points, paying $1.95.
They have really struggled to score points against the better teams at this tournament and their 17 points in their All Blacks pool clash came courtesy of two very opportunistic tries.
As for the novelty bet of Grant Fox's 17 points in the 1987 final being bettered by Piri Weepu on Sunday, take the Fox option.
Weepu has rarely run in this tournament so a try from him would surprise, and being a halfback he doesn't have the option of an easy drop kick, so more than 17 points means he would need to kick five penalties and two conversions or something similar.
One of the best bets of the weekend could be in tomorrow night's bronze final, where Wales are outsiders, even though they would see returning home third as far more of a victory than the Aussies would.
Finals weekend
Friday: $1.67, Australia; $2.10 Wales.
Sunday: $1.08, New Zealand; $7 France.
