Phil Gifford: What it was really like before the All Blacks’ three Rugby World Cup wins

Richie McCaw and Dan Carter were criticised by some before winning the 2015 World Cup. Photo / Brett Phibbs

The All Blacks captain should be dumped. The first-five’s not playing at test level. There are too many has-beens in the team. New Zealand won one and lost one to South Africa, and scraped through against England. How can they win the World Cup?

No, I’m not writing about the 2023 World Cup - I’m recalling what was happening in 2014, the year before New Zealand’s magnificent World Cup victory in Britain.

Having reported at every World Cup, I can vouch that before New Zealand’s three Cup-winning tournaments the mood of the rugby nation has been far from sunny.

Here’s what it was really like in the lead-up to the Cup victories.

1986: TEARS BEFORE BEDTIME

The upheavals in ‘86 make any issues this year look like rainbows and unicorns.

Rugby tore itself into two factions. Andy Dalton would have captained an All Blacks tour to apartheid era South Africa in 1985, but a court injunction forced its cancellation.

So instead Dalton led a team of All Blacks, who called themselves the Cavaliers, to South Africa. At first it didn’t work out that well. Dalton’s jaw was broken with by a punch in the second game, they lost three out of four games against the Springboks, and they were banned for two tests when they got home.

Then the Baby Blacks, as a team with 10 new All Blacks was quickly dubbed, beat a very good French side, 18-9, in Christchurch, and just lost, 12-13, to Australia. But as soon as their ban ended, 10 of the Cavaliers are rushed back for the second and third tests with the Aussies.

It’s hardly a happy merger. There’s a squeaky one-point win, and a 22-9 loss. In October they head to France, where after losing the last test of ‘86, a group of bully boys from the Cavaliers round on Baby Blacks captain David Kirk, who “ended up sobbing in my room.”

Cavaliers leader Dalton was named captain of the 1987 World Cup squad, but was injured at the first training. He wouldn’t play a game at the tournament. Instead Kirk would lead them to victory in every match, and, in a unifying act of staggering generosity, dragged Dalton alongside him when the Cup was presented after the Eden Park final.

2010: THE HONG KONG HORROR

The All Blacks smashed Ireland and Wales here in June 2010, swept the Tri Nations against South Africa and Australia, and then in October stopped in Hong Kong on their way to a northern tour, playing the Wallabies. They lost 26-24.

The most vicious backlash was against first-five Stephen Donald, who was subbed on in the last quarter for Dan Carter. In the last minute Donald failed to find touch with a clearing kick. The Wallabies ran the ball back, and James O’Connor scored a try. His conversion won the game. The Kiwi knocking machine went mad, and in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph it was suggested Donald “was one of Australia’s best players.”

Next year, in the 2011 Cup final against France, “Beaver” Donald kicks the winning penalty for the All Blacks, they make a movie of his life, and he becomes a rugby icon.

2014: PRESSURE ON THE LEGENDS

By 2014 Richie McCaw and Dan Carter are, to most of us, untouchable legends of the game.

But there are heretics. Among the English media it’s become a snide habit to say that McCaw cheats, and then the opinion that McCaw, who turns 34 in December 2014, is too old starts to gain traction in New Zealand.

Carter had what was first described as a “sore leg” after the Crusaders lost 33-32 to the Waratahs in the ‘14 Super Rugby final. It was actually a fractured fibula. Suddenly, in some eyes, he’s injury prone and a potential liability. He plays just one test in 2014, against Scotland. “There are kindergarten projects,” writes a Kiwi journalist, “glued together better than his body.”

Coach Steve Hansen sticks with McCaw and Carter. They star in a brilliant All Blacks campaign and win the 2015 World Cup.