Gregor Paul: Why All Blacks can win or lose 2019 Rugby World Cup in the next three weeks

All Blacks Scott Barrett and Sevu Reece after their 23-13 victory over South Africa. Photo / Photosport

COMMENT:

If the All Blacks are going to win this World Cup, so much hinges on what they do in the next three weeks.

This is the time when champions are made. It's also a period in which the All Blacks have crashed in the past.

It's this phase that has done them in before as they have made the mistake of belting the tournament's bantamweights and thinking that has put them bang on track to be champions.

It's an obvious trap into which they have fallen once too often. Weak opponents mean big scores and everything looks good.

Confidence can soar at this stage but it is usually built on a false premise – an erroneous belief that running up cricket scores against the world's minnows is quality preparation for playing high intensity knock-out games.

Steam-rolling the mostly amateur Namibians is not a means to prepare for a quarter-final.

Hammering Canada will tell the All Blacks precisely nothing about their readiness to win this tournament.

What matters is understanding that the key to success is not about what happens in the next three tests. The games are a means to work specific aspects of their gameplan – a chance to refine things that may be useful later.

What counts is how much quality work the All Blacks can get through in training.

For the next three weeks, the All Blacks' toughest opponents will be the All Blacks and if they are going to win this World Cup, they need to be all blood and snotters at training, ready and willing to take lumps out of each other.

Jack Goodhue in action during an All Blacks training session in Beppu, Oita, Japan. Photo / Mark Mitchell

The World Cup will be lifted in Yokohama Stadium but it may be that it was really won on the training ground of the sleepy spa town of Beppu.

All Blacks coach Steve Hansen, who is at his fifth World Cup, knows the importance of the next three weeks.

He knows the need to prepare for what is coming in late October where the likes of England, Ireland, South Africa and Wales lie in wait, as opposed to focusing overly hard on early October where Canada, Namibia and Italy are lurking.

Beppu is a spa town – a place to relax in the mineral rich hot pools. But that's not on the All Blacks agenda.

They are here to put themselves under the sort of pressure they will likely encounter later in this tournament.

They are here to run themselves hard, work through the entirety of their strategic options in opposed scenarios.

Essentially they are trying to use the strength of their own squad to make training harder than the next three tests they will play before the quarter-final.

The conditioning investment has to be made now to pay dividend later, which is why the All Blacks are taking themselves to the edge of their physical and mental capacity behind the fence of their training ground in Beppu.

We can only guess at the ferocity of their training but the players this week have hinted at it.

Anton Lienert-Brown and Kieran Read warming-up during an All Blacks training session in Beppu, Oita, Japan. Photo / Mark Mitchell

They have made reference to the willingness of it all – the edge that has been apparent and the intensity of the competition.

They have alluded to the workload being enormous and the fact they were on deck at 8.30am the day after they arrived in Beppu to smash each other about for two hours in the stifling heat says everything about their mentality.

Senior players such as Dane Coles have been quick to answer questions about how they can keep their mental drive at the level produced in Yokohama against South Africa when the opposition don't offer any serious threat.

He was clear that the onus to do that sits with the players and that being an All Black comes with expectations about desire and professionalism.

None of Coles, nor Kieran Read nor Brodie Retallick will stand for anyone letting their standards drop in the next three weeks. They won't stay quiet if they see something they don't like.

They know that if they train the house down now they can ease off in the week of the quarter-final.

They want to come into that game with the freshness to be explosive and the stamina to sustain it for 80 minutes.

It's a difficult balance to strike but this was the winning formula for the All Blacks in 2015 and they are confident it can be again.

Which means expectations about how they will perform in the next three weeks have to be measured against the bigger goal of trying to prepare for the knock-out phase.

In 2015 they were accused of having lost their way when they bumbled through games against Namibia and Georgia and were only cohesive for 40 minutes against Tonga.

The usual screamers and ravers said the All Blacks tournament was on the verge of impending disaster.

All Blacks Scott Barrett and Sevu Reece after their 23-13 victory over South Africa. Photo / Photosport

But it was calculated and deliberate how the All Blacks played in those three tests.

They were fatigued and they were deliberately working on specific aspects of their attack which is why they didn't kick the ball once against Namibia or Georgia.

That planned and strategic approach saw them ignite in the quarter-final when they destroyed France. They also had the ability to dig deep in the semifinal to see off a Springboks side that wouldn't roll over and then drag out a huge last 10 minutes in the final.

Victory in 2015 was built on the three weeks of intense training they endured after defeating Argentina in their opening game.

In contrast, in 2007 the All Blacks blew themselves up when they were in a soft pool and had long breaks between games.

They didn't realise back then how much trouble they were storing up for themselves when they waltzed through the softest pool on record where the hardest game they had was a 40-0 pumping of Scotland.

It was a ridiculous month of carnival rugby for the All Blacks, where things turned surreal when a World Rugby official came into their changing room before they played Portugal and asked if they could take it easy in the scrums.

Portugal were a rag-tag bunch of accountants and farmers and there were fears about serious injury.

By the final quarter, the All Blacks had props playing on the side of the scrum and it was all a giant hoot.

Except it was sowing the seeds of failure. They had a month of pass and giggle and were horribly under prepared when they encountered France in the quarter-final.

There had been no intensity in their build-up. No pressure or adversity and so when it came in Cardiff courtesy of the French, the All Blacks had no means by which to respond.

It hit them hard and fast and they collapsed with neither the physical nor mental endurance to cope.

No one picked it at the time. No one quite saw how much trouble had been stored for the knock-rounds until it was too late, but having been through that, Hansen is not going to let it happen again.

If the opposition can't provide what the All Blacks need, then they will have to do it themselves.

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