French loose forward great Abdelatif Benazzi has warned the current team to take the right mental attitude into two tests against the All Blacks or risk heavy defeats.
Benazzi won 78 caps for France in a career that spanned both the amateur and professional eras and he has fond memories of the All Blacks, winning four out of seven encounters.
"If (coach) Marc Lievremont's team arrive in New Zealand dragging their heels and complaining about fatigue, they will lose by 60 points," Benazzi told the allblacks.com website.
"These players must be ready to give everything and fear nothing."
Moroccan-born Benazzi was one of a select few Frenchmen to win a test series against the All Blacks in their own backyard in 1994 and was a member of the side who famously beat New Zealand 43-31 in the 1999 World Cup semifinal at Twickenham. Unsurprisingly, it's left him with plenty of warm memories.
"1994 remains the best victory of them all," he said.
"Beating New Zealand on their own patch has never been easy, so to do it twice was simply exceptional. But we were a team ready for this sort of battle.
"In the first test in Christchurch, we surprised the All Blacks. It's extremely rare for the All Blacks to not respect their adversaries, but that day they didn't take us seriously.
"We could see from the haka that they weren't taking us seriously. And we absolutely wanted to win this game for Philippe Sella who was playing his 100th game for France.
"The second test was perhaps the most violent of my career," Benazzi said.
"With their wounded pride, the All Blacks were constantly at the very limit in terms of aggression. They threw themselves totally into the battle, giving everything they had in their reserves.
"For me, 1994 was a bigger achievement than what happened in 1999. We were down in New Zealand for five weeks and it was a wonderful experience."
The win in 1999, while achieved in the pressure cooker of a World Cup has never quite had the same resonance for Benazzi. He believes that it was a little over-confidence that once again made a telling contribution to France's victory over the All Blacks.
"They were sure they would beat us, made several changes and didn't put out their best team," he said.
"For example, they had replaced Justin Marshall with a little young guy called Byron Kelleher. But Kelleher was not yet the player we know today and he put in a very average performance.
"In the centres they improvised by playing Christian Cullen. But when he was taken out several times by Richard Dourthe, the All Blacks understood that they had they had made a mistake by underestimating us."
It's been a long and gruelling season for many of France's top players but Benazzi was quick to quash this as a potential excuse for Lievremont's 2009 troops.
"When we arrived in New Zealand, we were all exhausted by a tough season. So when I hear people today talking about this interminable season, it makes me smile.
"These problems in the French calendar are nothing new. They've been there for 20 years. But we were ready to transcend even more, to hurt ourselves to the detriment of our health.
"To beat the All Blacks, they have to play as though it's the last 80 minutes of their lives."
