KEY POINTS:
Todd Blackadder says the All Blacks are the best team in the world.
"They'd have to go in as hot favourites, no other team has performed as consistently," Blackadder said.
The toughest challenge will be how the players are rotated because on any day, any team can beat
anyone.
He said South Africa will be the team to meet the All Blacks in the final because of their depth.
"They're our biggest adversary," Blackadder said.
But Blackadder said it can be argued that the World Cup is detrimental to the game in New Zealand.
"Everything is designed around the World Cup - all the contracts, all the players and so is their out-look.
"My personal opinion is that coaches should be appointed the year before the World Cup and then go four years from there so they learn to look beyond the World Cup," Blackadder said.
He said the players and coaches should be forced to look to the future, beyond four years.
"We just look at the four years that we hire and fire management teams and coaches.
"At the moment everyone lives and dies on whether or not we win the World Cup but it's not the be-all and end-all for New Zealand rugby," Blackadder said.
He said he is passionate about New Zealand's fight for the World Cup.
"Mate, I hope we win the World Cup so we can just put it in the trophy cabinet and get on with rugby," Blackadder said.
Final prediction
Final: All Blacks versus South Africa
Result: "All Blacks by "who cares, one point is as great as a hundred. We'll take anything"."
Todd Blackadder's All Black career
(Source: www.allblacks.com)
Full Name: Todd Julian Blackadder
Born: September 20, 1971
Position: Lock and loose-forward
All Black Debut: October 25, 1995
Matches: 25, 14 as captain
All Black points: 15, 3 tries.
YOUR PREDICTIONS
It's only weeks away from the Rugby World Cup and we want to hear your predictions of who will win. Who do you think will be in the final and what do you think the score will be?
We'll run your predictions online and you could be the winner by picking the right score.
The winner gets to the right to call themselves the Rugby Brain of New Zealand... and our sports team at nzherald.co.nz will also rustle up a prize for the most accurate prediction.