KEY POINTS:
Recently a TV presenter told his colleagues and the viewers around this "great little nation" of ours that come World Cup time "four million sets of eyes will be watching".
This is clearly a man, I thought, keen on cheerleading and national chauvinism and a believer in the old saw about rugby being the game for all New Zealand. It isn't. Today, a substantial proportion of the population has little or no interest in the game at all, and many are hostile towards it, believing it gets coverage out of all proportion to its merits and value to our society.
Nevertheless, there is no denying that rugby matters a lot to many New Zealanders who like its complexities and the courage and physical commitment and skills required to play it well.
Some see it as a means of making the "rest of the world sit up and take notice" of this "little" country.
New Zealanders love to think that in all sorts of areas "we punch above our weight".
On the one hand, this attitude is a bit pathetic, makes one squirm; on the other there's an element of defiance to it that appeals to those who like the thought of beating the odds.
In all sorts of ways, New Zealanders are like Davids that hunger to become Goliaths.
I've long believed that in many of us, and in males especially, sadism and masochism exercise energetically and often. And here, rugby and league are the games where that is most evident.
Twelve years ago, in one of the scores of pieces I've written on sport during the past 40 years, I mused that in winter it was "hard to suppress the pagan side of us. The oiled, muscled, strapped brutes" charged and milled about in all weather and limped "off to the blood bins. On the terraces crowds chant, sing, cheer, jostle, bay for blood. The sporting proletariat devours pies and slurps beer; there's banter, belching and abuse."
Of course, the terraces are disappearing in all but the smaller towns and cities and the corporate boxes, and giant stands, are evidence of the extent to which rugby's core support is fast disappearing.
Believe me, in the eyes of rugby's heartlands, the fact that the NZRFU has decided that in 2011 the semifinals and final - and possibly the quarter-finals - of the World Cup will be played in Auckland is proof of the fact that mammon rules rugby now, and that that is eroding the ethos many prefer.
There's a fine line between what people accept and enjoy as colourful, and what is seen as superficial, show-offy.
Our society now is far more aggressively individual and hedonistic; and while most can live with the talk of Jerry's hairstyle and Dan's jockeys, because as players they also deliver the goods on the field, Ma'a Nonu went down the gurgler with his eye-liner because he didn't quite cut it often enough on the field.
One of the smart things about Graham Henry, Wayne Smith and Steve Hansen is that they have tried hard to emphasise the value of intelligence and a cohesive team unit while at the same time allowing for individual expression; call it flair. One suspects they are trying to avoid player "boredom", don't want the All Blacks to be too predictable in their play. Yet some fans worry that the "ABs" have been given a licence to be reckless, and that fuels the fears of those who believe that winning rugby at the business end of World Cups depends on performing the basics well. The frills, the pretty stuff needs to wait until you've subdued the other bastards.
The feeling I get - and I'm right in the heartland of the game, Otago country - is that many believe "expansive" rugby only really works against inferior opposition.
The voices I hear say the basics are the key to beating the leading contenders and that, despite the All Blacks' favourites tag, it's too close to call between South Africa, Australia, France and, possibly, a wild card - England perhaps.
One hears it said, by those who revel in platitude, that the All Blacks have to learn to relax more and that the "key to success" is being seen to be having "fun".
There's the implication that other teams have more fun, have learned to relax more than we do. Really? Where is the proof that the South Africans or the Aussies or the French or the English players are better at relaxing, have more fun?
I can't see it. I know from having played a lot of sport at a fairly high level, and having been around many who have, that it's great fun to have won, and that relaxing beforehand is hard to do. All are nervous before big games. Victory ebbs into serenity, pleasure, possibly tranquillity. Losing hurts, for a bit, and then you get over it, or ought to, unless you belong to a nation whose rugby fans have unreasonable expectations, no sense of perspective.
What is required of players is that they compose themselves, train hard, focus on the job in hand as best they can, don't get distracted by trivial things and play their hearts out.
The best players are those with techniques that don't break down under pressure, are tenacious and have the temperament that increases their likelihood of performing well on the big occasions. Experience helps a lot in that regard, and this All Black team has a fair bit of that. Which makes me believe that they will be hard to beat. But we don't have a mortgage on a hunger to win. New Zealanders like to believe that we have a greater will than many others. I doubt it.
Once upon a time, the desire to become an All Black was an end in itself, and one that ensured you great kudos and often respect in the community to which you belonged.
You identified with a particular region, sometimes quite a small locality, and you worked in it with others of varying occupations during the week. Modesty and a bit of genuine humility were characteristic of most New Zealand reps in all sports. Some still have that side to them, but many aren't identified with regions to the same extent as they used to be.
Many appear to have, as their principal object, a desire to make as much money as they can while they can, wherever. So maybe they are not warmed to and embraced to quite the same degree.
After all, who owns them if it isn't adidas and Sky TV and brewery companies, and so on?
And there's a nauseating amount of talk about the value of "empowerment, ownership and leadership".
I'm not convinced that much of the activity, and the number and nature of the off-field demands, does much to enhance their performance. That said, they are paid very large amounts of money, so the fund of public sympathy's not as flush as it might otherwise have been.
There's A big paradox at the heart of New Zealand society now and it's evident in rugby. On the one hand, we're told to go for it, make as much money as we can and flaunt it. On the other, there's the vaunting of the virtues of team "culture", the Three Musketeers' pledge, all for one and one for all. I've no idea how all this will pan out but it's clear which way the pendulum is swinging just now.
In the early to mid-nineties professional rugby here was in its infancy. My impressions of rugby crowds down the years were that they expressed "astonishment, apoplexy, ecstasy, and exultation". And then, as now, a few saw some players as exalted.
Meads, of course, was a colossus. Today rugby writers and fans say Dan Carter and Richie McCaw are "the best in the world". And Jerry Collins is deemed the ultimate "hard man", our Arnold Schwarzenegger, a man Clive James once described as looking like a condom full of walnuts.
That our boys are the best is what the punters want to believe. Never mind the arguments of those who say there's too much wishful thinking and delusion, and possibly also an element of jingoism behind all this. Not to mention a craving and then a fear that we might not be the best in the world after all. Never mind the views of those elsewhere who say that New Zealand rugby displays signs of arrogance, and that Stephen Larkham and Schalk Burger and Stirling Mortlock and so on are the equal of anyone we have.
About 12 or 13 years ago, I remember talking to a woman who has written some excellent books for teenage girls. She was keen on sport, and liked rugby for the variety in the various phases of play and the way it catered, she said, for all physical types, from the big blocky buggers in the front rows, to the little halfbacks and the swift wings.
These were days before the emergence of muscled mammoths in almost every position, testimony to jars of supplements and hours of lifting weights in gymnasiums.
Like many, she was uncomfortable with the extent to which New Zealanders tend to idolise people for their physical abilities and downplay the value of intellectual attainment.
She disliked the brutal aspects of the game and thought rugby players got an "excessive" amount of attention.
Well, brutishness and brutality is at the heart of the game, and that won't change.
If you're looking for elegance and grace, while it's there in speed and agility, in the handling and kicking and passing, and the poise and clear-headedness needed under considerable pressure, it's debatable if the essence of rugby's appeal lies there.
The core of rugby is the memory of the Colosseum.
The die-hards revel in and look for biffo. Let the claret run, they say. Let there be periodic outbreaks of "how's your father".
The crowds enjoy a bit of stoush and the tut-tutters are a minority.
But my father's mother, and there were many like her, hated the game. She reckoned it was for "bullies and thugs and pissheads".
In part, it may be generational. For example, my son's girlfriend, 21 at the time, thought the game was "cool" but felt many of the female students she knew didn't like the "beer-drinking, pack mentality" that went with "some of the footy guys".
I hope that, should the 2007 All Blacks fail to come home with the World Cup, they and their management aren't derided and abused and termed "failures".
There's a chance, as I see it, that one or two other teams may prove to be slightly better, or simply luckier.
Luck does come into it, quite often. But I give them a very good chance.
It's never been obvious to me, though, just which is our best team. That strikes me as a good thing. It means we have depth.
I worry a bit when we have two or three players in key positions who take their eye off the ball when under pressure and who spill the ball in tackles. We also have a problem in that other teams are better at "reading" our lineout than we are at reading theirs, and that means they get away with more interference than we do at lineout time.
If anything our jumpers are inferior to our main opposition. And around the field, is there a danger we may be tempted to be too expansive, too inventive too early, or too often?
As for referees, their decisions are often bewildering to all and sundry, so there's clearly an element of luck there too.
The 2007 team is a good one, in all sorts of ways, in the eyes of that significant proportion of New Zealanders who believe that much that is most noble and truly admirable in a man can be found in and defined by two blunt, one-syllable words: All Black.
In 1995, I wrote that I saw the All Blacks as "today's equivalents of the bronze-clad warriors out of Homer. And despite the absurd amounts of money being bandied about and, in some cases delivered, to numerous remarkable bodies with unremarkable minds, most players are still principally driven by a desire for honour and glory. Just as they have always been."
I see no good reason to alter that view. Go, the All Blacks.
* Brian Turner is a Central Otago writer who has authored books on Colin Meads, Anton Oliver and Josh Kronfeld.
