Champs for a new generation

On Sunday a new generation of world champions was ushered in, and it's not just the All Black players I'm talking about. Like the oft-repeated line about the "stadium of four million", when the ABs win we can rightly call it a squad of four million, so we're all world champs in my book.

Yet for many New Zealanders aged about 30 and under, we've never really thought as ourselves as the world champions before. Partly because since 1991 we haven't actually been top dogs, but also because our memories of the time we last lifted the trophy are fuzzy at best.

I was five years old when a bloodied David Kirk lifted the World Cup at Eden Park in 1987 (those under 24 weren't even born), and I was nine when we surrendered it four years later.

And as proud as I am of the'87 team's achievement, my knowledge of the tournament comes almost exclusively from repeated TV clips.

Ask 10 people my age or under to pick 1987 winger Craig Green out of a line-up and you'd be lucky to get a 20 per cent success rate. As for some of the wider squad members, I don't have a clue who Mark Brooke-Cowden is, yet Wikipedia says he too was given a winner's medal that year.

With Sunday's win that has all changed. Not only can I name every player in the World Cup 2011 squad, I will remember those players for years to come, in part because they are so much more relevant to my generation. As great as it is for our world champions of 24 years ago to have gone back to the farm the day after the final, it's also nice to have world champions that know their way around Twitter.

The 30-odd men who picked up winners' medals on Sunday are a new generation of heroes, world champions that those of us too young to remember 1987 can call our own.