Rugby: The art of World Cup mode and why the All Blacks are timing it right

The All Blacks are starting to time their run for the Rugby World Cup in Japan. Photo / Getty

One of the trickier challenges international sides face ahead of a World Cup is knowing when to flick the switch into full-on preparation mode.

The World Cup sits omnipresent on the horizon, and at some stage every team that is heading there has to decide when they are going to fully commit to not only showing the tactical hand they are likely to play when they get there, but also when they are going to acknowledge internally that everything they are doing is designed with the World Cup in mind.

This has been a specific problem for the All Blacks in previous World Cup cycles. Prior to 2011 their World Cup story was one of crushing disappointment and abject failure.

They were the masters at playing all their best football in-between World Cups and then somehow finding a way to fret and fuss and over complicate their preparation to blow-up at the tournament.

They have been guilty of over-thinking things, of wrongly believing they have to be radical and dramatic.

That was the case in 2007 when they came up with the ill-conceived plan of keeping 22 of their best players out of the first seven rounds of Super Rugby.

It was a mad cap idea to start with and then compounded by some erratic and poorly planned application. If the All Blacks had just gone about their business as per normal that year, they probably would have won in France.

The decision to not tour Europe in late 2002 with the bulk of the likely 2003 World Cup squad was, however logical and valid in theory, probably not the right one in practice. Again the All Blacks felt they had to do something out of the ordinary - have a definitive World Cup plan to be successful.

So when the All Blacks, as they are now doing, are talking about shifting into World Cup mode when it is still 11 months away, should this be a concern? Is it too early?

The answer is no. The All Blacks have won the last two World Cups and by and large, they got their preparation right.

They hit the mythical sweet spot of not over doing it yet not pretending it wasn't there either and they would appear to be on track to do that again.

The basis for believing this is that if there was a perfect campaign - or one that is at least hard to critique - it was the 2015 World Cup.

The All Blacks timed their run well, opting to put the World Cup front of mind when they flew to Chicago to play the USA in late October.

They saw that as the point at which they needed to be super-imposing World Cup scenarios. The test against the Eagles was considered to be their last pool game (which would be against Tonga) and then seven days later they had to play England at Twickenham, which they saw as the quarter-final.

They wanted to experience a situation where they would play a Tier Two team one week and then a highly-charged and capable Tier One team the next as this would be what they would have to do at the World Cup in 2015.

The All Blacks' have decided to shift into World Cup mode slightly earlier this time round, but in essence what they are doing closely mirrors how they approached 2015.

Head coach Steve Hansen says they are treating the next two tests as a dry-run of a quarter-final/semi-final situation where they will inevitably have to play two tough games back-to-back.

He obviously wants the players to be aware of the pseudo-World Cup scenario so that next year, should or most likely when, the All Blacks reach the first knock-out round, the bulk of the squad will be able to think back to Argentina and South Africa 2018 and recall how they dealt with the challenge.

Part of the reason for going into World Cup mode now is that when the All Blacks return from South Africa, their next two tests will be in Japan.

They will be staying at the venues they will use at the World Cup and the purpose of those two weeks is not so much to replicate the sort of rugby challenges they will face next year, but to experience the lifestyle and understand what it will be like to prepare for big games in a country which is quite different to New Zealand.

They will have another World Cup knock-out round scenario when they leave Japan and play England and Ireland back-to-back and once they are through that, their next test will be in July and the World Cup really will be upon them.