"It's quite cool doing those sort of things. We did it at the end of the season. You know if you don't take interest in it then you just get given what you are given. If you are not interested then you can't really moan about it or give feedback. They give us a chance to do that and you've got to buy into it."
McCaw and his team-mates asked for something that fit well and felt comfy. A quarter of a million Euros and two painstaking years later, their German kit manufacturers adidas unveiled a two-way woven, carbon fibre-infused garment designed to stretch in a way that mimics the players' skinfolds.
The Dynamic Stretch Analysis (DSA) technology that has gone into the jersey is used in the aerospace industry to test where aircraft wings should be reinforced, says adidas. So the chances of another SBW sideline stripoff appear slim - about as slim as the chances of a would-be tackler getting hold of Ben Smith after he has ghosted through a gap. The two-way weave is designed to stretch for comfort but not to give when a desperate tackler tries grab a handful of shirt as an All Black flies by.
"What we've done is worked the fabric in a certain way so that the stretch is duplicating the skin stretch," said Francois Tabard, category director for rugby at adidas' HQ in Herzogenaurach, Germany.
Most senior All Blacks had visited the company's Bavarian innovation centre in recent years to undergo DSA scanning, Tabard said. Their input had been vital in producing a garment tailored to meet their every need. Forwards need something to grip onto at scrum and lineout time, so their jerseys boast proud, reinforced seams and grip panels. That innovation came partly at the behest of the IRB (now World Rugby), which watched on in horror in 2011 as the game buried itself in a mountain of collapsed scrums that were at least partly caused by the trend towards tight-fitting, grip-resistant jerseys.
The fabric the jerseys are made out of is used in high tech sail making due to its superior strength.
If this all sounds familiar - and just a little too good to be completely true - there's good reason for that.
Adidas reinvent the All Blacks jersey wheel every two years, and the iteration unveiled Wednesday is in fact the same as the one rolled out in London in November ahead of the All Blacks' 24-21 victory over England at Twickenham. The pre-world cup field testing has gone well.
"One of the things we looked for in the England v New Zealand game was how the scrummaging was going to go," said adidas' director of team sports Simon Cartwright. "I think there was only one scrum that collapsed during the course of the game. It was a lot less than you would normally get and we were jumping up and down."
All Blacks captain Richie McCaw will be in attendance Wednesday to provide his thoughts about the jersey. While his review was expected to be positive, that hasn't always been the case. The reality does always match the marketing blather.
The 1999 world cup jersey - the first made by adidas - contained revolutionary grip technology on the chest to help players catch the ball. Turned out the grippy stuff didn't perform well in the cold, and in the wet it may have even made catching the ball harder as it became slippery. It interfered with crucial sweat zones, was uncomfortable and was easier for tacklers to grab.
"I don't think it made it particularly worse because ours wasn't a fixed sheen, it was little dots," said Cartwright. "It wasn't significantly worse but it didn't bring a lot of benefit."
The players were far from impressed, admitted Babard.
"It was considered more as a gimmick that a performance feature."
Read more:
Little black number players' second skin
The 2015 World Cup All Blacks jersey
Designed using: Dynamic Stretch Analysis - an "exclusive body mapping system that measures players' bodies as they move revealing strain applied to skin and in which direction".
Made out of: Woven carbon - a unique new fabric that allows two-way stretch and delivers players optimum movement. Utilised in the sailing industry for its superior strength, flexibility, give and breathability, this fabric makes for the strongest rugby jersey adidas has ever made.
Features: Forwards and backs get specific jerseys, with the forwards' jersey boasting raised and reinforced seams for better grip at scrum and lineout time.
