All Blacks back-row Ardie Savea was left with feelings of disappointment and pride after his team fell to an agonising 30-29 defeat to France on Saturday.

Les Bleus came out on top in a thrilling clash as they fought back from 17-10 down at the break to claim victory and with it hand New Zealand their first loss on tour.

Speaking after the Test match, Savea admitted it was a hard result to take as he felt they had the game in their hands before France came out firing after the interval.

‘Disappointed’

“Extremely disappointed. We put ourselves right in there to win the game but silly mistakes, we turned the ball over, and you know the French squad, a quality side, will punish us and they did, so yeah, pretty gutted,” he told TNT Sports before crediting France for how they turned things around in the second period.

“Of course you do,” he said in response to acknowledging France’s comeback. “We felt like we were in control and we were pretty accurate in the first half. You know, holding the ball, heavy possession and you know, getting penalties and we were scoring.

“In the second-half, we just kind of let them in the game. They applied pressure on us and we couldn’t handle it and towards the end we just got stuck on our line and we just couldn’t do it.

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“Although I’m extremely disappointed, I’m really proud of the boys. You know, we’ve got next week to go, so disappointed but we’ve got to move forward.”

Savea, who started the game at openside but was moved to blindside early on after Samipeni Finau departed, was then asked how he would rate their tour thus far.

The All Blacks have beaten Japan, Ireland and England on their year-end travels north and after a first loss, the star was quizzed on whether they are hitting targets.

Came up short

“We didn’t hit it tonight,” he admitted. “You know, we wanted to go win everything (on tour) and you know we didn’t get it tonight. And that’s credit to the French squad, a quality side.

“So we have to look in the mirror and see where we could have put the nail in the coffin because we didn’t do it tonight.”

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