The All Blacks haven't really had a game at the Rugby World Cup that has tested them or required sharpened motivation to the point required by a quarterfinal. Argentina was a good contest first up, but when you go into a big game like the quarter-final against France, you get up for it; this is what being an All Blacks player is all about.
Running out against lesser nations in pool play is nice for the game and it is nice for those countries, but the reality is that we want to go up against the best and measure ourselves, and this is where it matters. And with all that has happened between New Zealand and France going back to 1999, this is huge. This is the World Cup final for one team so far as we are concerned. One will move on, one will go home. Forget about what happens after this week, the final is this weekend.
One of the offshoots of the World Cup this year has been the interest further afield in what makes the All Blacks so powerful in terms of the legacy around the team; it's something no other country enjoys.
I think there is an awareness of the history of the All Blacks, and it has been there for the past four or five generations. For all New Zealanders growing up, the All Blacks are our heroes, they're the only team or organisation or body that every young kid growing up aspires to be. Whether that person chooses to play rugby later on in life, or whatever, it is more of a case of what the All Blacks represent to New Zealand society and the history that has gone along with the team, and the stories.
But I suppose the success they have achieved is what makes them who they are. That adds to the aura around the team because their success is second to none. The second-most successful team is a long way back compared to what the All Blacks have produced.
Rugby is the sport the country has adopted as our favourite game, and the All Blacks represent the hopes and dreams of what we can do best and how we do it best. There wouldn't be many boys who haven't dreamed at some stage of being an All Black.
When you enter the All Blacks environment, the attachment to the legacy is a personal thing. Everyone brings their own make-up as to what it means to them as individuals, but collectively nobody wants to let the All Blacks jersey down - or the history that has gone before. You strive to become the best you can be inside that environment.
When you play your first Test and get involved with the team, you do so with the expectation of what you have to uphold and it comes with the weight of the nation. Every time you take the field, the expectation is you will be the best you can be and you're going to win. I've been in teams that have lost and I've seen two sides of the New Zealand public. One is that they love you when you win, you can also be the public enemy on the other side of things if you don't deliver.
This week typifies that, and the performance of the All Blacks so far in the World Cup means we are not a happy nation right now; but still the expectations for the game against France this weekend are huge. And because of that, the aftermath is going to go one of two ways. That weighs very, very heavily on every person in the All Blacks camp. They'll understand the implications, or the backlash, that could happen, but, again, at the forefront of their minds is that they just have to go out and play well for themselves. And for that team, and the guys around them.
Inside that team, it comes down to the fact that you are in the trenches and it is about you and 14 other guys on the field at any one time. Guys are expected to go out there and do their job, and if they do their job well - and in any All Blacks environment, you know that 14 other guys will concentrate on their job - you know the outcome will happen as well. That's the key difference between the All Blacks and every other team that I ever played with in my career: in the All Blacks all you have got to do is worry about doing your core role and your job and you know that everyone else will do the same and it will turn out all right; quite often elsewhere you have to hold up, or do that little bit more, to make up for some of the guys around you.
You can't get away from the media coverage. I know most sporting people say they don't listen to the media. But their mothers or fathers, their aunties or their uncles or their friends do, and they tell them. You can't help but hear when someone says, "Did you hear so-and-so on the radio?" You say you tend not to listen to it, but the other person says, "Well I'll tell you what they said". You can't escape it, and it is even worse now with social media.
These days it is very easy for everyone to have a voice, and you know what has been said. And while 40 years ago the communication wasn't so prominent, if you were really honest with your own evaluation of how you were playing you'd know whether you had a good game or a bad game. Now the mirror is only an inch or two from your face, so you can't hide as people are not afraid to let you know. It's more a case of getting rid of the negativity because negativity leads to more negativity and it just becomes a spiral.
Everything you do has got to be solution focused. You have got to think, "I made a mistake, how do I amend for that mistake, what do I need to do to improve, am I fit enough, am I fast enough, am I strong enough - all the rest of it".
You have to work in the right direction and improve whatever the negativity or the comments are about - and in that All Blacks environment you can't help but do that because there are so many people who only want success and want to work hard. The level of competition inside the camp is huge, and the competition for bragging rights over who's the fastest, who's the strongest, who's the fittest will be there.
It's the same whenever you get a bunch of guys in any environment; and you can use Zinny Brooke and his brother Robin as an example. Being around those guys, if you stood around in a hotel corridor for long enough there would be a game that came up; it might just be bouncing a ball on your foot, or just weird games invented on the spot, which became a competition. Every thing we did was a competition, and that is healthy and fun.
I've got no doubt there'll be similar characters, and similar things happening, inside the All Blacks camp now because, at the end of the day even though their ages may range from the early 20s to mid-30s, there is still the boy in those guys and with their playful natures boys will be boys.