Mike Hosking: Why the All Blacks will win the 2019 World Cup

So with the year having drawn to an end for the All Blacks, I fear we have missed an opportunity.

Not all of us. I love the All Blacks. I love the All Blacks unconditionally. But not in a way that many sports fans seem to: they involve themselves in the minutiae of yardage, stats, specific moments to litigate and re-litigate referee calls, selections that need encyclopedic analysis.

I don't do any of that.

I just enjoy the game. And most games end up being enjoyable. I guess I am a patriotic supporter.

The disconnect here between those who have spent so much of the year worried, angsting, moaning or depressed about the season, and people like me, who haven't, is the fact we can get too close. And in getting too close we lose the fun.

Clive Woodward, post the Wales game, could not have been more complimentary of the side.

Eddie Jones, as good as he is, as well as he's done, was right when he said Steve Hansen should have won coach of the year.

The world sees us for what we are. The best there is.

We won everything. We won the championship. We won the Bledisloe. We are still ranked number 1, 8 years in a row. We won the northern tour. And in doing all that, we rebuilt or are in the process of rebuilding.

We are rebuilding because what really counts, I mean really really counts, is the World Cup.

We learnt that lesson before 2011. Before 2011, we were besides ourselves. Oh, how soon we forget. But we were beside ourselves over the fact we won everything all year but then choked at the World Cup and had since we won it at its inception.

All that got rectified of course in Auckland, and then London.

But since then, almost as though we are pre-programmed to find fault, we have gone searching for others aspects of our game to be picky about. No businesses is immortal or immune to change and upheaval. No team, no sport, no individual. Yet unless we win everything by 50, there's something not quite right.

I believe in Hansen and his team. I believe New Zealand rugby run a world class, if not world leading, programme that keeps us at the top. I believer we breed players who are blooded into positions of greatness in a way that keeps us winning and the best in the world.

And because I believe all that, I have loved the season. I loved the All Blacks, and have not a doubt in my mind that next year will be as good if not better and 2019 will be three world cups in a row. Now why wouldn't you believe that?