KEY POINTS:
"We'll have to play like men possessed next week." - Dan Carter last Saturday night.
"What would you say if you were coach?"
The Herald asks its readers on Thursday.
In the privacy of our own brains, we can be anyone we choose: Winston Churchill,
Tiger Woods, Casanova, Colin Meads, even William Shakespeare (if the midwinter night's dream is vivid enough).
In the privacy of our own brains, we can imagine doing anything; saving the world, winning the Open, leaving Catherine Zeta Jones limp on the pillow, maybe even - since Shakespeare transcends everything but his own imagination - playing a match with a broken arm.
Sport is one of the great imaginings. Sport is where the body dreams its dreams. But for those of us with bodies whose limits deny such dreams, sport is a game we play in our head when no one else is watching. It's then we imagine the most impossible things, like scoring the winning try in extra time in a World Cup final while the fireworks flash and the crowd roars like a thousand oceans.
There are fertile grounds for such imaginings this week. Or, more specifically, one ground, on which will unfold a drama of no consequence but great importance.
If you could, in the privacy of your own brain, choose any job in New Zealand this week - apart from being Dan Carter - you would surely choose to be the All Black coach.
That would be the measure of you as nothing else could. It would be your biggest test, not so much a job as a black hole, the exact point where the dense essence of your ability and national expectation collide.
That is a challenge worth imagining.
So here we are, under the stands at Eden Park and it's time for the coach to say whatever it is that coaches say just before the war begins.
But what does the coach say ... ?
Well, here's what this coach says.
He says, "Dan's right, you guys. You will play like men possessed tonight.
"And whatever possesses you will define you. It did last week. And it will tonight.
"I don't know what possessed you last week. But you do. You know how it felt. And you can feel the same way again if the same thing possesses you. Your choice.
"The sports psychologists say you shouldn't focus on failure. It breeds negative attitudes. But I want you to have a negative attitude.
"I want you to have a really negative attitude towards how you felt last week. I want you to taste how bad it felt after the game.
"And if it didn't, don't play. Pull a hamstring. Sit this one out. I'll get someone in the crowd to take your place. See, I know how they feel. I know what it means to them. They've paid to be here.
"For one reason. And only one reason, whatever they tell you. They want to be you. That's it. They want to be you. You possess them. Let them possess you.
"Take what they're giving you and put it in your blood.
"Take the look in their eyes when you win and make it your air.
"Find a kid in the crowd and let them give you their excitement. Possess that. You're the reason for it.
"Forget all those people who want to clip your ticket every week. You're not part of a brand. You're part of a tradition. And you came to it.
"I don't know why you came to it. I don't know what possessed you. But you do. Find that. Find the stony paddocks and the baths full of mud and the way it felt after you scored the first try of your life.
"Find the memory of a boozy haka in some overseas pub where everybody else wants the other team to win. Find how it felt when you got a chocolate bar for being player of the day.
"Let that possess you, too. Take that with you. Be the player you wanted to be. Before you were.
"You know how good you are. Or how good you can be.
"Possess that. Possess the chance to prove that you're part of the best team in the world. And that everyone else plays better because they're playing you.
"That's a gift. Respect it. Possess your own strength. You've got the chance tonight to find out more about yourself in 80 minutes than most people do in a lifetime.
"You want to be men possessed? Then possess the chance to find out how big the part of you is that won't give up!!
"That will be your measure. That will be what you see in each other's eyes when it's over. You will know. So will the guy next to you. And a country.
"Because that's who you are tonight. A team and a country. You win, we win. It doesn't make sense, but possess it anyway. For some irrational reason I'd need to be William Shakespeare to understand, you are who we are. You're the only 15 men in the world who can make four million people cheer till their throats bleed.
"Now go and do it!"
