Chris Rattue: Rugby World Cup starts this week for the All Blacks against Springboks

The All Blacks' bid to win the Rugby Championship got off to a flying start in Buenos Aires.

You know an All Blacks team is having a bad day when Ben Smith misses the high balls, in one case altogether.

But as any good student of the Rugby World Cup knows, it doesn't pay to do really well in the lead-up games before the tournament.

Actually, England swept all before them as they charged towards glory in 2003. This included their second-ever win over the All Blacks in New Zealand, and annihilating all comers in the Six Nations.

But we won't let that silly anomaly get in the way of a good curse story.

All Blacks World Cup failures have been put down to a remarkable variety of things. If the memory is correct, one of them is playing too well in the lead-up, or is that playing too well in the intervening years?

This fear of too much success perhaps became official policy in recent weeks when All Blacks coach Steve Hansen kind of mentioned it.

"Do we want to win it? Yeah, but if we don't win it, we won't lose any sleep over that," said Hansen about this year's heavily curtailed Rugby Championship.

And so the All Blacks entered the RC by declaring it third rate behind the Bledisloe Cup and World Cup.

But there are only three RC games for each team this year, and one of them is the first Bledisloe Cup encounter. And it is written in stone that every All Blacks team is hell-bent on beating South Africa.

Surely.

Which singles out Argentina as the solitary "who cares?" game, and it kind of showed.

Having buried this psychology into the players' heads, it was probably no surprise to see a makeshift All Blacks side chucking passes at thin air and giving penalties away with abandon in Buenos Aires.

Neither side was anywhere close to acceptable test standard at the wonderful Estadio Jose Amalfitani, where two Nicolas Sanchez stuff-ups swung the game New Zealand's way.

Not winning the Rugby Championship could move into more genuine territory this week.

Not only are the impressive Springboks on the way, but some formed an advance party.

Like the All Blacks, the Boks put up a B-plus team against the Wallabies. Unlike the All Blacks, they gave their opponents a shellacking.

It might be best for the All Blacks to drop the "Rugby Championship is third rate" bizzo, particularly after a shaky northern tour in 2018.

Quit the overthinking. Keep it simple.

And there is another form of World Cup curse to be avoided called a really confident South African team.

England drew a lot of strength from their victory over New Zealand at Wellington in 2003, when they were down to 13 men at one stage.

In other words, the World Cup starts for the All Blacks this week.

Truth be told, it seems to me the All Blacks are not as close as they should be to knowing their top 23.

There are still major holes in the loose forward combination and midfield. This "RC doesn't count" talk reflects their uncertainty. Finding out who is World Cup ready in World Cup year is leaving things very late.

Neither Hansen nor Rassie Erasmus will unveil all their World Cup strategies on Saturday night. But there are plenty of psychological and physical points to be won.

Maybe this is an old fashioned view.

But the new-look All Blacks were largely dreadful in Buenos Aires apart from a few outstanding performances, notably Ardie Savea.

The selections for Buenos Aires made good sense, travel wise, but the rhetoric didn't. The real All Blacks side needs to make a big statement this week, or some rot will set in.

Facing the Boks in Wellington will be far more important, in many ways, than dealing with Namibia, Canada and Italy at the World Cup in Japan.