Ali Williams: Injury back-ups crucial to success

All Blacks winger Waisake Naholo goes close to scoring against Georgia. Photo / Brett Phibbs

We are a few games into the tournament and many teams have been hit with injuries with the likes of England, Wales and Australia all having lost key players.

Other teams are inevitably going to suffer the same fate - including the All Blacks - and the most important thing is that you have to expect and accept they are going to happen. Injuries are a part of rugby. It is always tough for the individuals to miss out, but everyone knows the nature of the game.

From a World Cup perspective, the process of dealing with them actually begins long before the tournament and it's so important that the coaches are honest with players in the period leading up to the World Cup.

What I mean by that, is that there are a group of players back in New Zealand who have been with the All Blacks in the last 18 months but didn't make the initial squad.

They are in New Zealand right now under the watchful eyes of only themselves. Are these guys energised and excited? Are they back there truly believing they are going to be the next cab off the rank and keeping themselves in the right physical and mental shape?

Everyone has to remember that things can happen at a World Cup. Look at the All Blacks in 2011, we lost Dan Carter, Colin Slade then Aaron Cruden.

And that's the other thing about losing players - the rest of the squad has a big responsibility to immediately embrace the new men and give them the best chance possible to settle and perform at their best.

When Stephen Donald came into the squad in 2011 ahead of the semifinal, he was encouraged not to look at the reasons why or ask himself questions about all that. The message to him was, 'you are here mate because you have been picked and you deserve to be here'.

We knew that as a squad we had to have confidence in every player that came in and strength in the jersey was crucial.

Looking back, we were all in shock the day we learned that Dan was ruled out. There was a bit of time spent wondering how we could lose our best player and best player in the world but we quickly parked that.

We asked why we should let that diminish our chances? Sometimes a situation like that can make you stronger and there was the other issue, that we had a game that day against Canada and we couldn't dwell on it.

We had to get on with it and give Colin the help and support he needed to play his role in the team. We needed to make it as easy as we could for him.

When you look at this All Black squad at the World Cup, nearly half of them were involved in 2011 as was coach Steve Hansen so they have lived through an almost unbelievable injury crises at a World Cup.

The other strength this squad has is, going back to the first point I made, they have a significant number of players in New Zealand who have recently been involved with them. If injuries strike, they aren't going to have to call up players who have never played test rugby before and that's so important.