Performance nutritionist Katrina Darry keeps watch on the entire food production process for even a humble vat of soup to protect Dane Coles and the other All Blacks from contamination risks. Photo / Getty Images
Performance nutritionist Katrina Darry keeps watch on the entire food production process for even a humble vat of soup to protect Dane Coles and the other All Blacks from contamination risks. Photo / Getty Images
Specialist staff aboard to buffer All Blacks from any and all threats to safety.
The modern term for it is "risk management" - the rest of us would probably just call it security.
However you want to describe it, protecting sports teams at major events is big business. And when you are the biggest brand in your sport, it's even more important.
Like most nations at the World Cup, the All Blacks don't like to talk openly about security measures but they have never been more extensive.
Terrorism is at least one new phenomenon, but there is more than the scourge of modern-day travel to deal with nowadays.
If there's a lightning rod for Kiwis on how it can all go horribly wrong, her name is Suzie.
New Zealanders of a certain age will remember how the All Blacks' 1995 World Cup dream ended in tears in South Africa amid allegations of deliberate food poisoning at the team's hotel by a mysterious waitress named "Suzie" on the eve of the final against the Springboks.
The current team have their own nutritionist, Katrina Darry, who works with hotel chefs to ensure all food protocols are followed. The team eat meals prepared to Darry's guidelines in a separate part of the hotel's restaurant away from other paying guests. Darry looks at everything from ingredients to hygiene to how and where the food is stored.
"We have a full-time nutritionist and she doesn't just design menus, she looks at kitchen hygiene too [but] contingencies can only go so far," AllBlacks manager Darren Shand says. "I think it's best summed up by a 'careful, not paranoid' approach."
Dane Coles seasons safe soup provided by nutritionist Katrina Darry. Photo / Getty Images
He said "outside the environment most of these guys are aware of the risks in the public domain with drinks and things like that".
Darry also prepares the sports drinks for training and match-day, with special precautions around the storage and handling of supplements, for example protein powder, due to the potential for contamination and a failed drugs test.
"Supplements and products are batch tested," Shand says. "If we need 20 tubs of protein powder, we'll send one away to get tested so we know that batch is safe. We can't risk it. Certainly, with the number of cases that have arisen with contaminated products, we have limited the amount of sports supplements we use."
Shand is the man tasked by New Zealand Rugby to shield Richie McCaw and his men from outside, malevolent factors. It's a job he takes seriously, confirming he has been in meetings with Rugby World Cup 2015 organisers which discussed how best to react to a terrorism threat. The All Blacks have already been forced to adjust planning at this World Cup due to security concerns.
Shortly after checking into their luxury London hotel for the opening week of the tournament, they discovered a security fence erected around their training pitch still allowed guests in the hotel restaurant to view their every move.
That led to a four-metre fence being erected behind the smaller one. And the security guards outside the fence are even twitchy about that, telling New Zealand journalists not to take photos of it.
But to ensure there were no prying eyes, New Zealand Rugby booked out all bedrooms facing the training pitch so guests or, potentially, spies, couldn't see what the men in black were getting up to.
The Wallabies have already had a potential brush with espionage after security guards were forced to chase off a man hiding with a long-lens camera next to their training ground.
