BREAKING BAD

For 24 years the All Blacks couldn’t win the World Cup to confirm their place as the most dominant team in the game. That all changed in 2011.

FOR 24 YEARS THE ALL BLACKS COULDN’T WIN A WORLD CUP TO CONFIRM THEIR STATUS AS THE GAME’S PREMIUM TEAM. THAT CONSTANT FAILURE ON THE BIGGEST STAGE SAT AT ODDS WITH THEIR LEGACY UNTIL THEY TURNED IT ALL AROUND IN 2011. GREGOR PAUL WITH THE STORY.

Since Cardiff it was always going to be about the next World Cup here in New Zealand.’ RICHIE McCAW

For more than 20 years, even the All Blacks wondered whether they had a problem they were never going to cure. They had become the sporting equivalent of Achilles, immortal but for one flaw.

That flaw was the World Cup. They won the first one in 1987, playing the sort of dynamic, highly skilled rugby that everyone knew them for. They were way too good in that inaugural tournament and used it to confirm that they were the world’s best side.

It felt right that the All Blacks should be the first winners. They had, by any definition, been the most dominant side in the game up until that point.

They were, sort of, the unofficial world champions when there was no tournament to actually determine who was the best team on the planet.

After they won in 1987, many rugby observers wondered whether there was any point in persevering with the concept. After all, surely it would be much the same every tournament – the All Blacks would turn up, the All Blacks would win. That’s how it was most years, so why would the World Cup prove to be any different?

But after 1987, the All Blacks couldn’t find their killer touch. Those predicting a procession of All Blacks titles were stunned. They were wrong. The World Cup didn’t turn out to be an extension of normal rugby life.

The All Blacks would indeed be their usual dominant selves for the period in between, but contrived a way to stuff it up at the World Cup. It was a surprise and it wasn’t just once, it was five times. The All Blacks came to each World Cup between 1991 and 2007 as favourites and each time they came away disappointed.

In 1991 they were probably too old and stale. Too many players who had been involved in 1987 hung around for another go and the All Blacks just didn’t have enough energy or innovation to beat an excellent Wallabies team.

In 1995 maybe they were just unlucky. Arguably they were the best team in South Africa and redefined what was possible in terms of fitness, speed and skill. But come the final they were unwell – hit with a virus or something else, it didn’t matter...they were off their best and lost 15-12 after extra time to the Boks.

In 1999 they imploded in the second half of the semifinal against France. Or maybe France exploded. Or maybe both things happened – but the All Blacks were found out and knocked out.

Four years later and they were out- thought and out-played by the Wallabies and after five tournaments, the All Blacks had won just once. The landslide never came. Not even close.

By 2007, the All Blacks were in a state of torment about their continued failures at the World Cup. They had their incredible win ratio. They had plenty of trophies – Tri Nations and Bledisloe Cups and the like. They were constantly finding great players and evolving their gameplan and they held the number one ranking with ease.

All would have been great but for the fact that they couldn’t close the deal, as it were, and confirm their status. The world may have thought of them as the best team, as the most innovative and storied nation in the game, but they didn’t have the World Cup in their midst to endorse that sentiment.

It hurt to be so good in between World Cups only to see some other country deliver on the biggest stage.

There were some tough moments to take – none tougher than 2007 when the All Blacks had swept everyone away the year before only to inexplicably blow up in France once they got there. To see South Africa crowned champions when they had been in real turmoil 12 months out from the tournament was difficult for the All Blacks.

The New Zealanders knew they were the better team. They knew they were capable of playing the better rugby and beating the Boks, but they had failed to prove it. The All Blacks had failed to stay calm, to cope with the pressure and play with the same attacking verve and confidence they normally would.

It earned them the dreaded tag of chokers and while that was harsh, it was also hard to dispute.

When the All Blacks arrived back in New Zealand after their failure in France in 2007, there was a sense among the senior group that their number one priority was to fix this whole business of not winning the World Cup.

It had gone on too long and there was no denying it was damaging their reputation. It was a blight on their legacy in many ways. They couldn’t call themselves world champions and they couldn’t match either Australia or South Africa for titles. That was wrong. The All Blacks, as everyone knew, were world rugby’s true leaders and driving force, and yet they didn’t have the paper work, not all of it, to back that up.

There was a little concern behind the scenes that constant failure was making it hard to win a major, global sponsor and more than anything, it just bugged the players something chronic that they kept letting themselves down.

In early 2008, the mood was one of make your mind up. Graham Henry and his coaching team of Steve Hansen and Wayne Smith had, against the odds, been reappointed. They were back in on a redemption ticket – left with a clear mandate to get right in 2011 what they had got so wrong in 2007.

Once the coaches were locked in, the New Zealand Rugby Union had to contract the core group of players necessary to get the job done. Top of the list were of course Richie McCaw and Daniel Carter. Both signed in April 2008 through to 2011 and on the back of that, others such as Ali Williams, Tony Woodcock, Mils Muliaina, Brad Thorn and Richard Kahui followed.

They all had one overriding goal – to win the World Cup in 2011. As McCaw wrote in his biography: “Since Cardiff it was always going to be about the next World Cup here in New Zealand.”

Or as Williams more forcibly suggested: “I don’t think you can be great and not win a World Cup. I also think you can’t be great and lose games. I am pretty excited to have an opportunity to show people I can still hack it at this level. And an opportunity for me to try and reach that ultimate goal I’ve had for a long time, to achieve greatness in the jersey.”

There was no ambiguity about the long term mission that began in 2008, but

interestingly, unlike in previous cycles, the All Blacks kept thoughts of 2011 on simmer, not rapid boil.

The lure of winning the cup was why the senior players signed up, but they weren’t going to spend the next three years obsessing about it. They were going to take each test – each year – as it came, hoping to win along the way and evolve into the team they felt they needed to be to be successful.

In the 2007 cycle, the All Blacks had the World Cup high on their agenda a long way out. In 2005, they began a process of selection rotation to build their resources for the World Cup two years down the track.

It wasn’t a little bit of tinkering here and there, it was often wholesale. On their Grand Slam tour at the end of 2005, they selected one team to play the opening game against Wales and a totally different XV to start the following week against Ireland. Many loyal fans didn’t like it. They felt it was against the All Blacks ethos but head coach Graham Henry was unrepentant. He’d come into the job in late 2003 after the All Blacks had bombed in Australia and his mandate was clear – build a side that could win the tournament in 2007.

The rotation didn’t ease up in 2006 as Henry continued to insist that he needed two world class options in every position. As much as there was opposition to the strategy, it was easily enough shot down as the All Blacks kept winning.

It was only after the All Blacks were knocked out in the World Cup quarterfinal that the dissenting voices had the ammunition needed. It wasn’t just the constant rotation that irked, it was the so-called reconditioning policy in early 2007.

Henry brokered a deal with the NZRU to withdraw 22 leading All Blacks from the first seven rounds of Super Rugby. His thinking was that the players would be better served training and advancing athletically. Part of the thinking, too, was that by playing later in the year, they would be peaking in September – less likely to be tired and broken.

The theory stacked up, but the execution didn’t and nor did the reality. The players ended up short of match fitness and the negative publicity around the arrangement built the pressure on them at the World Cup. The All Blacks had taken a huge risk with the programme so the reward had to come.

“As soon as the 2007 Rugby World Cup was over I thought we didn’t do it properly, we didn’t do it the right way,” Henry said in early 2008.

“If we’d won it, we’d probably have thought ‘well, it is the right way’ but obviously we didn’t [win]. So looking back and finding the reasons why, and making sure people are well aware of those, is the key.”

That’s why in 2011, there was no special plan. The World Cup wasn’t specifically prepared for as such other than the decision to not take a full squad to South Africa for the Tri Nations test a few weeks before the tournament. That was about saving a few legs and it was a smart ploy in the end.

Once the All Blacks actually got into the tournament, they had a different philosophy to 2007. They played, mostly, their best team in every test – something they didn’t do in 2007. They didn’t think beyond the group stage and they realised that it counted for nothing that they had beaten teams before the tournament and were coming in ranked as number one in the world.

The World Cup was a separate beast with a whole different rhythm and set of rules to normal test rugby. That’s why a team such as France could be thumped by the All Blacks in pool play, lose to Tonga and yet still make it to the final. And not only make it to the final, but find a totally different gear once they got there and threaten to rain on New Zealand’s parade.

The 2011 final proved to be New Zealand’s breakthrough moment. They had advanced to the last two through a combination of skill, commitment, composure and sheer willpower to not be thrown by adverse events.

Their mantra was expect the unexpected and that enabled them to deal with the injury loss of Carter before the last pool game. That enabled them to regroup when Cory Jane and Israel Dagg went out on the town and embarrassed themselves ahead of the quarterfinal and it enabled them to cope, only just, in the final when they had to hang on for 25 minutes with just a one-point lead.

“In 2011 there was a change of focus,” Henry wrote in his book. “The team looked at the total challenge, understood it, walked towards it, embraced it. Pressure associated with the success of the team was deemed to be earned; pressure was a privilege.

“A philosophy was that at some stage a group of young New Zealanders are going to win this thing, so it might as well be us. That All Blacks also understood – and talked about – the fact that the unexpected was going to happen; when it did, they would be prepared to handle it.

“This strategy – the unexpected is going to happen, so handle it – was born out of the World Cup quarterfinal against France in 2007. On that occasion, the first unexpected event was losing not one but both first-fives – Dan Carter and Nick Evans – plus others to injury. The second unexpected thing was having a referee who allowed the opposition to get away with murder.

“So in 2011 when Carter ripped the adductor tendon off the bone practising goalkicking before the final qualifying game against Canada, the unexpected happened. But because we had discussed the unexpected, and it had become a key strategy, we handled it.”

Relief was the main emotion for the All Blacks in 2011. They had finally won another tournament. They had the endorsement they were after – that they were the best side in the world and now they could say it.

It felt good and went some way towards strengthening their legacy. It made more sense that the team which had been ranked number one in the world consistently since 2009, were also now the world champions.

But as far as the players and management were concerned, they needed another title to strengthen their claim. The two World Cups the All Blacks had won were in New Zealand. They needed to win offshore and they needed to become the first defending champions to retain their title.

No one had done that and if they could suddenly go from one title to three, their position would be indisputable. They would be, as they wanted, the most dominant team in history.

Having struck gold in 2011, everyone knew the right path was to ignore the World Cup as much as possible until it was right in their face. The pattern was largely similar to the previous cycle – the All Blacks were rampant through the period: they lost just once in 2012, not at all in 2013 and just once in 2014 and 2015 ahead of the World Cup.

In four years they had lost just four tests, but again, it was critical they didn’t believe any of that mattered. When they arrived in England, they refused to talk about anything other than the next game.

“The All Blacks have had a good enough team to win all the World Cups, but they made mistakes and some of the preparation and attitude were not quite right, expecting

The team looked at the total challenge, understood it, walked towards it, embraced it. Pressure associated with the success of the team was deemed to be earned; pressure was a privilege.’ GRAHAM HENRY

to win because they arrived with a lot of success behind them,” Hansen said when the team touched down. “It was only in 2007, when we were given another go as a coaching group, that we took ownership of it.

“It’s about getting your processes right, your preparation right and your game right … the catch-cry of 2011 was expect the unexpected. I don’t think we did that in 2007. I think we rocked up a little arrogant possibly, like previous All Blacks teams over the years may have. We were too comfortable, and just expected it to happen.

“In any sport if you rock up into a contest and you just expect it to happen, the other athletes will have something to say about that. You’ve got to go earn the right to win it. We’re in good shape in that regard. We’ve understood that was a mistake and one we’ve worked hard on making sure we don’t repeat.”

The All Blacks also had to accept that they couldn’t escape scrutiny: everyone had them pegged as favourites but was challenging them to prove they could win away from New Zealand.

There was no point in pretending there wasn’t pressure – extreme pressure so the All Blacks came up with a new mantra. This time it was ‘walk towards the pressure’.

They embraced the occasion, knowing they had a major advantage in the handling pressure stakes. Every test the All Blacks play they are expected to win. Doesn’t matter against whom or when, they are expected to win. The World Cup made no discernible difference in that regard – intense pressure was the norm for them, but perhaps not for many of the other teams who weren’t used to that sort of atmosphere.

What had been a weakness in previous tournaments – a failure to stay calm in key moments – had become an All Blacks strength by 2015. They were able to get it straight in their heads that they had nothing to fear, no reason to be inhibited by the situation and that largely explains why they hammered France in the quarterfinal.

There was so much hype about that game – it was after all on the same ground against the same opponent they were dumped out of the World Cup eight years previously. History had repeated in one sense but not the other – the All Blacks were dynamic, expressive, creative and ruthless.

They were everything they weren’t in 2007.

“We can’t fear that,” Hansen said about pressure and expectation midway through the tournament. “You’ve got to embrace all that. It’s a special time. We’re going to something that’s a pinnacle in our sport, and a privilege to be part of. We’ve got to enjoy it as well, and it’s important we get that balance right. For a long time I think the All Blacks were driven by a fear of losing,” he said.

“Over time I think we’ve changed that to really not fear losing, because when you fear something you stop taking risks, and if you don’t take risks you don’t get the big rewards.

“I think winning the World Cup in 2011 took a big monkey off a lot of people’s backs... not only the players but the whole country. What we’re going to try and do no one’s done before. No one’s won back-toback world cups,

“But we can’t just turn up there as the defenders of this cup and expect to win it. We have to earn the right to even get to the playoffs, and then once we get to the playoffs, we have to earn the right to take the next step. So everything we do we have to earn it.

“Just because you’ve got a ranking that says you’re one or two, or three or four, it doesn’t give you the right to be in the top four, the semifinals, and it certainly doesn’t give you the right to be in the final.”

The statistics have no blip now. The big picture makes perfect sense. The All Blacks have the win ratio and three World Cup victories to prove their dominance. The World Cup is no longer the place where doubts have crept in about their excellence or mental fortitude.

They have learned the art of tournament play; of handling themselves on the biggest stage and now New Zealanders no longer find themselves vulnerable to taunts by South Africans and Australians about World Cup victories.

Now the All Blacks have a record that is indisputable – they are the most dominant team the world has known.

Just because you’ve got a ranking that says you’re one or two, or three or four, it doesn’t give you the right to be in the top four, the semifinals, and it certainly doesn’t give you the right to be in the final.’ STEVE HANSEN