Les Tricolours' fans are a forgiving lot, with ties forged between Te Puna and France during last year's Rugby World Cup re-established in the past week with the visit of three leading club coaches to the coastal settlement.
Francois Meyranx, Sebastien Baratchart and Stephane Barberena all coach in France's third tier Federale 1 club competition and decided after watching the All Blacks' 8-7 World Cup final win that a visit to New Zealand to become immersed in rugby culture was top priority.
All three live in the south-west of France, with Meyranx head coach of the Saint Jean de Luz club in Bayonne, Baratchart coaching the Toulouse University Club's under-20s and Barberena heading the Football Club Oloron senior side. Saint Jean de Luz and Oloron play in the France-wide Federale 1 competition, two tiers below the rich French Top 14 and a level below the 16-team Pro D 2 championship.
Meyranx and Baratchart are cousins, while Barberena and Meyranx are former clubmates. Barberena also a former foe of Te Puke's Vern Cotter, now coaching leading French side Clermont, when Cotter played for FC Lourdes.
Te Puna has strong ancestral ties to France through Frenchmen Emile Joseph Borell and Louis Bidois, who settled north of Tauranga from Normandy in the 1850s, and hosted several groups of French visitors during the Rugby World Cup as one of about 3000 domestic members of the Government's New Zealand 2011 business club programme which matched firms here with counterparts from overseas during the tournament.
Te Puna's Stephen Wilson, a caterer/chef who returned to the Bay after 28 years living Paris, said the French trio were pointed in the direction of Te Puna by a woman in the south of France working for a company specialising in assisting rugby clubs with their growth and development. He was thrilled to re-open the links between Te Puna and France's rugby stronghold and utilised the visitors' skill in the kitchen over the weekend as he prepared a French banquet featuring delicacies from the Normandy region at a fundraiser at Te Puna Rugby Club.
Although kayaking in Queenstown and helicoptering onto Franz Josef glacier was also on the itinerary, it was the rugby experiences Mayranx, Barberena and Baratchart were high-spirited about between mouthfuls of fish and chips at the Fresh Fish Market on Dive Crescent.
They got to chat with All Blacks legend Bryan Williams at the Ponsonby Rugby Club, while former All Blacks flanker and Bay of Plenty Steamers coach Kevin Schuler talked coaching at Te Puna before setting them up with another former All Black, Tabai Matson, as they ventured further south.
"You would never get that in France," Meyranx remarked of their hat-trick of All Blacks in the space of a week. "Bryan Williams is such a great person, easy to speak with, and we understand better now the legend he is for the All Blacks. He was very approachable, which is not always the case with our great players."
Schuler talked coaching tactics, getting the best out of players and suggested drills to improve attack, defence and the offload. "It was an interesting way of thinking for us but we were impressed with how easy it is for a Kiwi to share information, when in France it would not be easy for a Frenchman to speak, considering it a rivalry, which is ridiculous."
They were sideline at Saturday's Te Puna-Mt Maunganui Baywide premier club clash at Maramatanga Park, won 36-22 by the home side, and were intrigued with the close interaction between players and coaches at the Maori club.
The call to host the Frenchmen might have come out of the blue but Wilson said he is keen on growing the relationship between the place of his birth and his home for almost three decades. "I've had the presidents of three other clubs already in contact with me and I see it as vital that Maori here forge closer links with their France connections, otherwise we'll never talk about France and never celebrate it."