It is the week of the World Cup final and no earthly rugby matter can overshadow it but it is some testament to men such as Richie McCaw, Dan Carter and Keven Mealamu that this being the last week of their international rugby careers is doing its best to do just that.
Ian Foster, New Zealand’s assistant coach, has dismissed any suggestion that the detail will be so much as mentioned in his team’s preparations for Saturday’s showdown with Australia, however much it may distract the rest of us.
“It’s a rugby World Cup final,” he said. “We’ve talked about this particular game for a long, long time. We’ve wanted to be here, we’ve had to work hard to be here. Now for all the team, whether they’re thinking of moving on or not, it’s only about the here and the now. This is the moment.
“There’ll be plenty of time afterwards to talk about people. We don’t want to waste this opportunity, so we’re putting everything we can into doing the only thing we can, which is to prepare well day by day.”
They will roll out McCaw and Carter in the week to face the media. For now the All Blacks are articulating their mood through the younger of their number. Aaron Smith, Carter’s half-back partner, was an uncapped provincial player four years ago, when New Zealand won the previous World Cup. He earned his first cap the following June and now feels almost as established as any of the great centurions around him.
“Time flies when you’re having fun,” he said, “and I’ve had some amazing times in this team. I had a little moment after the game the other day, thinking about how it’s here. All the talk the last few years has been about heading towards this. As a player you’ve always got to put it to the back of your mind but it’s finally at a point where we can talk about it because we’ve earned the right to play in the game everyone wants to be a part of. We’re there and that really excites me.”
Straight after he spoke on Monday the All Blacks decamped from Weybridge to spend the rest of the week at England’s multimillion-pound facility at Pennyhill Park, minutes before Argentina arrived in Weybridge, having had a week at Pennyhill Park themselves. The Springboks were there the week before that. It is as if the authorities are doing all they can to let everyone have a go on the departed host country’s best kit.
“You guys are making out that it is quite posh so I’m getting excited now,” said Foster, just before departure. “But as far as I’m concerned it’s a hotel with a training field and a gym. Will we want to take it back home? Well, there’s a lot of facilities we’d like to take back home. This country’s got some amazing facilities.”
It was a poignant, if unintended, reminder that a state-of-the-art rugby team can be produced without the equipment to match. Foster back-pedalled when asked if it proved such facilities were an unnecessary distraction to a country trying to produce a champion team. “It doesn’t prove anything,” he said curtly. “We’re in a different environment. We haven’t got the ability to do that, so we have to find our own way of doing things.”
Whatever that way is, it continues to work.
