The All Blacks are braced for what should be a vociferous "football-like" crowd at the Stade Velodrome when they face France on Saturday in their last rugby Test of the season.
The 60 000-seater Velodrome is home to top-flight French club Olympique Marseille, winners of the inaugural Champions League in 1993 and currently involved in this season's competition for the 11th time.
The Marseille fans are known for being among the most passionate in France, with the two end stands in particular creating a blistering atmosphere with their choreographed chanting amid smoke from discharged flares.
"The guys are pretty excited," said skipper Richie McCaw when asked about playing at the Velodrome, scene of a 42-33 victory for France when the two teams last met there in 2000.
"We've heard the stories about what it's like at the football matches here - something quite unreal. I imagine it will be a similar sort of crowd experience."
McCaw said that assistant coach Wayne Smith had "said what it's like when they played here in 2000... a typical football crowd, pretty passsionate and loud and will lift the French team".
"But it's something to be excited about".
He added: "New Zealand's pretty unique in the fact that that the crowd is a blur, a bit far away (because the stands are that bit further back from the pitch), but standing in a line-out here I'd imagine you can actually hear the odd voice.
"You learn to put that to the background when it becomes noisy: you feel like you're on your own when you can't hear what the fellah next to you is saying."
The All Blacks have notched up three wins from three on the European leg of their autumn tour, beating Wales (19-12), Italy (20-6) and England (19-6), and McCaw said the focus was now on a fourth victory and a rest.
"We've got to start well, there's no doubt about that. If you do that, it can quieten down the crowd.
"With a team like the French, you can't allow them to get a start which is perhaps what we did in Dunedin (in June when France won 27-22). They're a pretty hard team to get under control."
With four defeats on the international arena this season, the year has not been New Zealand's best, but McCaw said a victory over France would mean a lot ahead of a break.
"It's the one you'll remember in the (New Zealand) summer and I guess that's the one that everyone'll talk about. It'll be the one fresh in your memories.
"Certainly on this tour we've felt we've made improvements to the start of the year so it'd be nice to finish off with a good performance."
The All Black captain, who has been in outstanding personal form this tour, added that he had been "impressed" with the French performance against world and TriNations champions South Africa, a game won 20-13 by the hosts in Toulouse.
"They forced South Africa into making mistakes, and that's where they won. It's similar to the first Test in Dunedin," he said.
A win for France in Marseille would give the home side three wins from the last four meetings against the All Blacks, including an unexpected victory in New Zealand in June.
The sides will not play each other again until the group stage of the 2011 World Cup in New Zealand.
Even though New Zealand has won all four of its autumn tour games, France coach Marc Lievremont tried to pile on the pressure on Henry's team.
"We know the huge intensity they will put into this match. It's their last match of the season and it will be on this match that they are judged, on this match that they will get an idea about the World Cup," Lievremont said.
"We have a lot of young players coming into the squad who have a lot less experience than New Zealand's players."
