KEY POINTS:
Imagine this: on October 20, Richie McCaw lifts Bill - aka, the Webb Ellis Cup - as New Zealand acclaims the second All Black team to win the world title.
Now fast forward to 2027. Might we be sitting here wondering how come it's taken 20 years for McCaw, Dan Carter, Mils Muliaina, Carl Hayman and co to be honoured for their achievement?
If that happens it'll be a disgrace, just as it is that in 20 years since David Kirk became the only All Black captain to raise the cup aloft at Eden Park there has been no acknowledgement of that achievement by the national game's bosses.
It took the Halberg Trust to right a big wrong, and so at Eden Park yesterday about half the 1987 squad gathered, with coaching staff, manager and medical support men to reminisce, and swap tales which have grown ears and tails as the years have marched on.
As they glanced over their shoulders they'd have seen an Eden Park which soon won't bear much resemblance to the ground where, on June 20 that year, they sealed the deal against France, 29-9.
The All Blacks won the Halberg Award in 1987 so in a sense - with the next edition of the cup round the corner - the timing was ideal from the trust's perspective.
But where were the New Zealand Rugby Union in all this?
Nowhere, and you didn't need to stick a microphone surreptitiously under the right table to detect an element of resentment from some among the Boys of '87. Fair enough too.
The greetings yesterday were genuine among men who, in many cases, hadn't clapped eyes on each other in years. One or two girths were a little wider; most looked in pretty good nick.
Grizz and Harty, Sir Brian Lochore's assistant coaches and men whose relationship had its sticky moments, embraced like old buddies.
Richard Loe recalled how reserve halfback Bruce Deans had the job of counting all the heads on the bus leaving Eden Park.
He did his job perfectly - apart from leaving manager Richie Guy behind.
Kirk remembered his pithy reaction to British journalists after the match, men who had decried the type of game - tough, tight, unyielding, rather than sparkling and vibrant - it took to win the cup.
Differences in the game between then and now are huge.
No opening ceremony was budgeted for; the Auckland union was asked to organise something less than three weeks before the start. The late Lew Pryme, Auckland's executive director and noted man of entertainment, stepped in and at desperately short notice put something together.
A relay brought the ball to Eden Park, not from International Rugby Board headquarters then in London, not from NZRU HQ in Wellington, but from Auckland airport.
If it all sounds a bit amateurish, it was, and that's no criticism. There was a measure of naivety back then. This year's show at Stade de France on September 7 will doubtless be stage managed to the nth degree.
But Kirk also made a remark yesterday which is as pertinent today as it was in 1987.
Winning the cup back then, he said, had the effect of removing "a monkey off the back".
There may have been an assumption, which could only be borne of arrogance, that the All Blacks would win at least one more World Cup in relatively quick order.
In the 20 years since, Kirk's monkey has grown back, and it's bigger than ever.
