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Hosts France devised a special defensive approach to combat the All Blacks' continuity game, a tactic which allowed them to stay alive and head for a World Cup semifinal showdown with arch-rivals England.
Defensive coach Dave Ellis came up with the solution which brought a 20-18 victory and a stunning end to the quarter-final in Cardiff.
"New Zealand is the best team in the world at unloading and if you watched what we did today we sent the first tackler in high," he explained.
"Normally what we do is go for the legs and go to ground but we were worried about the referee allowing us to win the ball then.
"So to stop their offloads we got the first tackle going in high to block the ball and they then had to commit more men to the ruck and they couldn't play quick ball."
Match statistics showed France succeeded with more than 90 per cent of the colossal 197 tackles they were asked to make while the All Blacks were only called on to make 47 tackles in the match and succeeded with 36.
The All Blacks had 72 per cent possession and made double the handling errors that France did as both sides scored two tries.
Ellis said France had adapted magnificently to the defensive changes. They got it wrong a few times in the first half but in the second half they had gained some momentum from their defence.
"At 13-3 down, if the All Blacks had scored first after the break it would have been very difficult for us," he added.
"But we knew Carter was not going to go the whole game so we had to make him do as much work as possible, involving him in as much work as possible and then we were quite fortunate with the injury to [Nick] Evans."
