Scotty Stevenson: All Blacks find a happy medium

There is a lot to admire, from afar, about the way the All Blacks have embraced their first week in the UK ahead of the start of the Rugby World Cup. A million selfies sure add up to an awful lot of social media goodwill but one wonders this: will any amount of charm ever be enough to give the New Zealanders the nod as the neutrals' team? It's tempting to say not on this patch of the rugby world. Not with their win rate.

People don't look upon the All Blacks with that kind of hokey sentimentality, do they? They are admired for their record, sure. They are revered in some places, too - places where granddads still tell stories of the marauding hordes of hard-nosed farmers and brash colonials who came to town and cut the locals to shreds on muddy pitches under dark grey skies. New Zealand has built its rugby reputation on results, not on charm.

That this team is trying to turn on the thousand-watt smile perhaps says it's time for a change of tack. It also says plenty about the lessons they have learned from previous campaigns - and those lessons have been painful. In 2007 they hid themselves away, only to emerge in Edinburgh clad in grey, blinking and weary from their exertions in exotic destinations like Corsica and Aix-En-Province.

Back in 1991, by most accounts, they stalked around the UK po-faced and peremptory, the last vestiges of the self-perception of greatness still hanging around them like a burley trail of Brut 33. They had no chance of winning the public over. The Lansdowne Road crowd on the day of the semifinal was evidence of that. They swung in behind the Australians - the very team that a week earlier had knocked out the home side.

No, that kind of posturing is not for this side. They have been smiling like Cheshire cats from the minute they touched down in Old Blighty. They have scrawled their signatures on thousands of T-shirts and torsos, hammed it up for the cameras on Canary Wharf, and endlessly regurgitated the party line: they are not there to defend the World Cup, they are there to attempt to win it.

Hell, the skipper even took the unprecedented step of instantly rewriting four years of convenient Kiwi narrative by calling referee Wayne Barnes - he of 2007 quarter-final fame - a "top bloke", which is undeniably true, but may have ripple effects on the after dinner speaking repertoires of a number of McCaw's 2007 collaborators.

The only New Zealander seemingly not content to ride in style down the All Blacks' Super Highway of seductiveness was World Cup winner Ali Williams, though fortunately he soon realised he was "lost in translation", somewhere in France, and immediately took the next on-ramp, leaving any sign of anti-England feeling receding in the dust.

It is all compelling stuff but it still will not be enough. The All Blacks will soon discover the grim reality when they line up against the Pumas at Wembley on Monday morning: in rugby the underdog will always be the sentimental favourite, and when it comes to the All Blacks' opponents, they're all underdogs.

Just as it was here in 2011 when New Zealand crowds cheered for the minnows in every match, the English crowd will swing low in behind any team playing the All Blacks. No amount of glad-handling spray tanned Welshmen will win the crowd's favour at Cardiff come quarter-final time, either. This is a reality that they will just have to become accustomed to. This is the reality of being the number one team.

Still, there is something different about this All Blacks side. They seem to be at ease with their mission, and with their own expectations, and with the expectations placed upon them. They seem to understand that things are going to become real tough, real quick in this tournament so they may as well enjoy themselves while they can.

And they may as well try to win a few people over along the way, too. Before they get on the field, that is. As the late Gracie Allen would say, "Brains, integrity and force may be all very well, but what you need today is charm."

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