Ackford, who played 25 tests for England between 1988 and 1991 and also represented the British and Irish Lions, said the All Blacks' intensity was evident in a memorable interview he did with former prop Carl Hayman.
"I was allocated 20 minutes, though it could have been two. Hayman stared straight into my eyes, almost unblinking, for the duration of the interview, answering questions perfectly politely, but also perfectly perfunctorily. I do not think he was doing it for effect. We never got past the stage of yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir to find out, but it did provide a sense of how implacable and intense the man was."
Ackford wrote that the mentality pervaded the All Blacks and was what made them so difficult to beat.
"The All Blacks have always had a healthy appetite for confrontation. In one of those games against New Zealand, I packed down behind a front row that nightclub bouncers would have thought twice about confronting. The two front rows beat the living daylights out of each other all game, neither giving an inch. Looking back, it seems absurdly macho and pointless. But stuck in the middle of it, listening to the blows and the grunts, the sense of awe was as great as the fear.
"That is the first thing to recognise about the All Blacks. They never roll over. And it is not as if they are big men by the standards of modern international rugby. Sam Whitelock, the lock, Richie McCaw, the skipper, are not imposing physical specimens. Some of the backs - the trio of Smiths, Ben, Conrad and Aaron in particular - would not look out of place in a school sixth-form photograph. They just play big."
Ackford added that New Zealand's other strength is that they "do not build teams from scratch".
"They reintegrate, balancing experience and vigour. If you cannot cut it, you are shown the door, although sometimes they have held on to their iconic figures a shade too long, which is why this World Cup is as much a question of whether Conrad Smith, Dan Carter, McCaw and Tony Woodcock have the engines and the desire to last the distance as whether the rest of the world are good enough to thwart them."
The All Blacks' astute tactics were another major advantage, Ackford told his readers.
"I remember a conversation with Graham Henry. The International Rugby Board (now World Rugby) were planning to trial some ludicrous law changes that would reduce rugby to kicking ping-pong and Henry had spotted the potential for counterattack. He spoke of how he wanted his All Blacks - the back three in particular - aerobically fitter so that they could run more often from deep, and how he was asking his forwards to congregate upfield in pods so that the receivers could recycle the ball more easily when they were challenged. He was a man with a plan. While the rest of the world scratched their heads and whinged, Henry spotted an opportunity."
Unlike another former England player, halfback Matt Dawson, who mocked the All Blacks' haka this week, Ackford wrote of his love of the men in black.
"What's not to love about a nation with an 87 per cent win ratio in the past decade, up from an average of 83 per cent in the professional era, increasing at a time when international teams are meant to be getting closer to each other? My relationship with the men in black is not so much infatuation as jealousy, envy of that, the odd reversal aside they are the best there is, and have ever been. I do not care who you are, or what you have done in life. If you have any interest in rugby, you have wondered what it is like to be an All Black, to wear the jersey, be part of the tradition, to do justice to the haka even though you may have performed that ritual a hundred times before.
"It can colour your perception of all things New Zealand because I know it has mine. So, when I saw Steve Hansen, the All Blacks coach, then Henry's assistant, on his mobile, top button undone, leaning against one of the Twickenham posts a few years back, apparently without a care in the world, as his team went about their warm-up in front of him, I did not see an overly casual, complacent bloke with more than a hint of a paunch.
"I saw a man confident that he had prepared his team to within an inch of its life who, quite correctly, had handed over the responsibility for the outcome of the contest to his players. But, then, I've got an All Black thing going on."
