Pathway to Podium: Don't let rugby's grass roots die

All Blacks captain Kieran Read and flanker Ardie Savea after their devastating loss to England.

As painful as it has been to admit, England outsmarted, and brought more intensity than we did to the semifinal last week.

Eddie Jones pulled out all stops; he worked the media machine with all he had in the lead-up. He lauded the All Blacks to channel every inch of psychological intensity he could away from our boys, and into his England team. Hansen didn't buy into the chat, and it worked a treat for Jones – left free to paint England as absolute underdogs, and paint his team into a corner where they had no option but to fight for their life.

Tactically Jones and his coaches outsmarted us too – they analysed the All Blacks' acclaimed performance against Ireland in the quarters, and delivered the perfect strategy to snuff us out.

Getting absolute fight to the death desperation into a sports team is never easy. You can achieve very high levels of intensity reasonably easy, but to hit absolute maximal levels of arousal, as they call it, is a different story.

The All Blacks had won the previous two World Cups, so that absolute desperation was always going to be a challenge for our coaches and the team.

The England team definitely had the intensity, for them it was easier to bring, as they hadn't won a World Cup in 16 years, and as Jones crafted it, in the All Blacks, England were up against the ultimate rugby challenge of their lives. To get that "fight or flight" response, you need to be in a very real situation, and the English were.

But for the current All Blacks, you can't replicate what it is like for your country not to have won the world cup in 16 years. England had under achieved since their last victory in 2003, they have the player numbers, the massive financial resource – the expectation and pressure was on them to seize this golden opportunity.

Dejected All Blacks, from left, Sevu Reece, George Bridge, Anton Lienert-Brown and Beauden Barrett acknowledge their supporters after their loss to England.

The current All Blacks just couldn't fabricate that desperate situation, which would bring with it the very real desperation to win. In 2011 the All Blacks famously bore the weight of the nation, for which they even made a movie. And that sort of pressure is real, it does filter down to individuals and the team, and definitely has an impact on the squad's mindset.

In 2015 it was still there to an extent, the chance to be first team to win back to back, and the chance to win in a foreign land for the first time.

But in 2019 we had none of that – yes, we Kiwis wanted to win, but it wasn't quite the train smash if we didn't, the weight of the nation wasn't quite the same, and we haven't had the same collective depression that hit New Zealand after previous World Cup disasters.

So with all that in mind, it seemed to be a pretty reasonable post-match question put to Kieran Read, especially of the back of Hansen's preceding comments, that "did the team turn up with the right attitude tonight?"

To Hansen's absolute credit he is going to protect his players, especially when in a vulnerable situation like that, but in many ways it was a reasonably nice question - the questions could have been a lot worse.

Hansen can be pretty bullish and seems to have the ability to scare off any would-be tough questions. The wrath previous All Black coaches have faced after being knocked out of the World Cup far exceeds anything we have seen this week. Just because we have won the Cup a couple of times recently, shouldn't preclude the questions being asked.

It probably wasn't ideal firming up on our number 10 so late in the four-year cycle, and tactically did we try and play too much "positive rugby"?

And the selection of Scott Barrett sounded like a great idea at the time, but as Hansen admitted, on reflection the punt didn't pay off. An untested combination at the last minute, on the biggest stage?

Eddie Jones and the English were smart – Jones' deliberate strategy through the media to make the All Blacks as bigger favourites as possible, to put his own players' backs up against the wall.

Eddie and his coaches learnt from the All Blacks game against Ireland. England decided to push the off-side limit in the midfield to cut off our wide attacking options - they knew they had to.

They lived in the off-side pocket, time and again waiting there and picking up contestable ball that would otherwise have fallen into All Black hands. They knew Nigel Owens would be lenient and let the game flow, and not penalise them for it.

England played a brilliant tactical game, and brought the required intensity to execute.

So, who to support in the final? On one hand a win to South Africa will mean they draw level with three World Cup titles - and given they didn't even play in the first two World Cups, they would have a better record than us by achieving three titles from just seven World Cups.

And on the other hand it's England, and not many Kiwis I have spoken to are keen on that. The thought of England winning their second Cup, and drawing to within just one of us is getting a bit close for comfort. Heaven forbid them winning again in 2023 to draw level, and proclaiming themselves as the best rugby nation on earth.

Ah yes, if only we had won that fourth title, just to keep us clear of the chasing pack. Hopefully this World Cup result is just a blip, and not an unstoppable shift toward eventual supremacy by the bigger nations.

We can't out resource the big dogs, we can't put more into our high performance than they do – our point of difference is our grass roots in regional New Zealand, that is what the opposition will never have, and we need to preserve our grassroots game here at all costs.

If we keep our grass roots strong, slow down the player and coach drain overseas, and the player drain into a few big boys' schools, our regions and our grass roots will keep producing, and the All Blacks will always be competitive. If we let the grass roots die, we will never get it back.