Hype about NZ draws heat
The All Blacks have a miraculous ability to bring out the best in whoever they play.
They don’t have to do much to elevate opponents from hapless to inspired.
It’s an effortless business for them to magically transform teams without the faintest hope or shred of confidence into the sort of cohesive and dynamic units they have long aspired to be.
If the All Blacks just turn up and be themselves, it seems to do the trick every time. That target on their back is always there and every team the All Blacks play finds a way to shoot for it. That ability of theirs to bring the best out of others has intensified at this World Cup.
It’s not just that they are defending champions, it’s also because they are playing like defending champions.
Other than Japan’s brilliance in beating Ireland, it hasn’t been a World Cup to fire the imagination. The giant exception is the All Blacks, whose creativity and basic skills have been on a different level, and if they were widely liked in Japan before they arrived, respect and admiration has shifted off the scale since they have been here.
Their last try against Namibia by TJ Perenara was of such quality that the 19 other teams could try to reproduce it from now until eternity and never get close to a comparable re-enactment.
That’s why more than half the crowd at Tokyo Stadium were wearing black and only a fraction of them were from New Zealand.
It has been The All Blacks Show for most of this tournament so far and the hype that surrounds them and the excitement they bring is fuelling opponents.
That hype demands opponents to lift, to give more; to give everything like Canada did last week and Namibia did yesterday.
A few weeks ago, most of the Namibians were making 400km round trips to train between work shifts and yet for the first half, they looked like the kings of high performance. The contest for 40 minutes was absolutely genuine.