If it comes down to who has the flashest jerseys, the Rugby World Cup is as good as won.
Quizzed on what they wanted to wear for the title defence, which begins in Britain in September, the All Blacks plumped for something that fit well and felt comfy; preferably a nice little black number. A quarter of a million euros and two painstaking years later, their German kit manufacturers adidas will today in Auckland unveil a two-way woven carbon fibre-infused garment designed to stretch in a way that mimics the players' skinfolds.
The Dynamic Stretch Analysis (DSA) technology that has gone into the jersey is used in the aerospace industry to test where aircraft wings should be reinforced, says adidas. So the chances of another Sonny Bill Williams sideline strip-off appear slim. The two-way weave is designed to stretch for comfort but not to give when a tackler tries to grab a handful of shirt as an All Black flies by.
"What we've done is worked the fabric in a certain way so that the stretch is duplicating the skin stretch," said Francois Tabard, category director for rugby at adidas' HQ in Herzogenaurach, Germany.
Most senior All Blacks had visited the company's Bavarian innovation centre in recent years to undergo DSA scanning, Tabard said. Their input had been vital in producing a garment tailored to meet their every need. Forwards need something to grip on to at scrum and lineout time, so their jerseys boast proud, reinforced seams and grip panels. That innovation came partly at the behest of the IRB (now World Rugby), which watched on in horror in 2011 as the game buried itself in a mountain of collapsed scrums that were at least partly caused by the trend towards tight-fitting, grip-resistant jerseys.