All Blacks: Perfect 2013's pretty neat - Hansen

Steve Hansen

When Steve Hansen began his dream job as All Blacks head coach at the start of last year, he admits one thought did gnaw away.

"There was a wee moment of thinking, 'Am I actually good enough to do this?' But you can't sit there and dwell on that, otherwise you'll never make it," he says.

Two years on, can we safely say he made it? Twenty-eight tests, 26 wins, one draw, one defeat, 101 tries scored. Average margin of victory: 17.4 points a game. In 2013, 14 games, 14 wins, the first 100 per cent record over a calendar year by any team in the professional era.

So if Hansen had been told then he would preside over the most extraordinary two-year period of domination the modern international game has seen, would he have conceived it possible?

"Did I think we would end up with this record? No, but I did think we had to have lofty goals and work hard to improve on where we were. Otherwise, what was the point?"

The point, Hansen believed, was to make the world champions better than ever. When his team rescued his perfect rugby year with that last-gasp comeback triumph against Ireland in Dublin, maybe he did just that.

A week has passed since that drama. Hansen, in London to coach the Barbarians against Fiji at Twickenham last night in a fixture to celebrate the islanders' rugby centenary, is only now really savouring the magnitude of the achievement.

"Now you can think 'that's pretty neat'. You feel humbled just to be part of it," the 54-year-old says. Yet he makes it clear it is only a staging post. "We can get better next year and we must because everybody else will improve."

He is having to improve as a coach, too. At halftime last weekend, with his men rattled, tired and down 22-7, there was the perfect gauge of how Hansen has developed his art. It is easy to believe that, with an image of being an old-fashioned, dour Kiwi bruiser, this one-time policeman might have gone in for some serious ear-bashing. Not a bit of it.

"My image? In some ways, I don't care what people think. It's irrelevant. What matters is that my athletes understand what I'm like and I understand them. When I was a kid, if mum and dad and teachers screamed and yelled at me, it would turn me off. Coaches doing that doesn't actually fix the problem.

"I knew at halftime our attitude had been good, so there was no need to give them a roasting. It was about bringing them together, showing them I still believed in them, that they could still do it."

The remarkable triumph elevated Hansen's status as a master coach rather than Graham Henry's old sidekick or, as many in Wales still remember him, a grumpy failure running the national team a decade ago. Yet Hansen swears it was in that tough two-and-a-half year spell in charge of Wales the seeds of success were sown.

"I think about it every day when I'm coaching because I learnt so much. The biggest thing I learnt in Wales was you have to get the culture right, everybody putting the team first rather than themselves."

Perfecting that culture with the All Blacks is the keystone to their pre-eminence. His strength, he reckons, has been man management and creating a stimulating, humorous environment to accompany the highest professionalism.

"If you've got fun and stimulation in the right balance, then you'll get a performance every Saturday. This game doesn't have to be serious 24/7. When you train, you train; when you're not, have a bit of banter and a laugh."

Humility remains a prerequisite now Hansen finds himself being raved about. "I just see it for what it is. You've just got to stay humble."

Would his nation consider it a failure should the All Blacks not retain the World Cup in 2015?

"Some people may well say if we don't win it 'well, Hansen's failed'. Yet the World Cup is only one task when you're involved with the All Blacks. You don't have the luxury of being able to rebuild and lose. You have to win every game.

"If we're as successful in the lead-up to the World Cup as we have been this past two years, then you'd reflect 'we've done a pretty good job. We've left All Blacks rugby better than we found it'. That is all I'm striving to do."

He is succeeding spectacularly.