The All Blacks line up for the anthems during The Rugby Championship Bledisloe Cup match between the New Zealand All Blacks and Australia last year. Photo / Getty Images.
The All Blacks line up for the anthems during The Rugby Championship Bledisloe Cup match between the New Zealand All Blacks and Australia last year. Photo / Getty Images.
Somewhere in the country there is a World Cup superstar training the house down with their Super Rugby club.
He won't have the faintest inkling that he's destined for stardom – on track to enjoy a career-changing 12 months.
His focus will stretch no further than training well enough to win a starting spot in his Super Rugby side.
He'll have no idea that in nine months he'll be the centre of attention with the world's media in Japan – hailed as the All Blacks secret World Cup weapon.
But someone's life will be turned upside down this year. Someone will emerge from a dormant state and storm Super Rugby and in doing so make an irresistible case to be part of the All Blacks test match package.
Someone unexpected will re-shape the All Blacks' attacking possibilities and give them a degree of freshness and unpredictability that hasn't been there in the last couple of years.
It's happened enough times in previous World Cup years to be sure it will happen again in 2019.
Michael Jones was unleashed at the first World Cup in 1987 as was John Gallagher and the two of them gave the All Blacks a different attacking threat.
In 1995 it was Jonah Lomu who made an unprecedented impact having been viewed as a failed experiment the year before.
The All Blacks were a radically transformed team in 1995 as a result of Lomu's surge to form and when they turned up in South Africa they were a mystery force.
In recent times it has become harder to pluck a random player from obscurity, but in 2011 the All Blacks saw two players re-invent themselves in World Cup year.
Having missed much of 2010 with injury, Richard Kahui evolved from a hard-running, big-tackling centre into a world class aerial wing.
Israel Dagg, who had a few cameo appearances on the All Blacks wing in 2010, converted into a game-breaking fullback with the ability to take high balls and pop up at first receiver.
Those two, in combination with Cory Jane, gave the All Blacks the mix they needed in their back three to win the World Cup and their collective ability to collect the ball in the air and launch counter attacks was priceless in a tournament that was dominated by kick-chase strategies.
And then of course in 2015 it was Nehe Milner-Skudder who made the All Blacks in his rookie Super Rugby season and was so good, he became a must-pick on the right wing, scoring six tries at the tournament.
His unique brand of ultra agile football proved too difficult for opponents to read and the All Blacks had something different to offer in attack than the weaponry they had used in 2014.
So who could be the unknown hero in 2019? Who will be the player to transform the All Blacks – rejuvenate their attack and provide the point of difference that will unsettle opposition defences?
There are two prominent candidates in Jordie Barrett and Akira Ioane.
The former has been with the All Blacks in some capacity since the last World Cup, but hasn't yet found his feet in test rugby.
This could be the year he does as what became clear in the last test of 2018 is that, for now at least, Barrett's natural home in the All Blacks is the right wing.
It's there that he could offer the All Blacks a new weapon – as a near specialist kick-pass receiver.
At 1.95m Barrett can be the target man for brother Beauden's attacking kicking repertoire and sending the ball flat and hard across the field could become a strategy the All Blacks heavily employ this year.
Against the British Lions and Italy last year, the Barrett's have shown that if Beauden kicks across the defence, Jordie can climb high to retrieve the ball.
Executed well, it's a tactic that can conjure tries, but it also comes with the added benefit of forcing defences to keep their widest defender on the touchline.
The All Blacks have struggled to build their attacks in the last two years when opponents have used their openside wing to push up hard and fast on defence and force a decision to be made about how to play the ball into space.
Barrett is a potential game-changer for the All Blacks – a player who could have both a profound direct and indirect impact on the attacking potency of the defending champions.
World Cups are so often shaped by defining moments, killer plays that no one forgets and it's not so hard to imagine that in 2019 Barrett could provide that indelible memory by latching on to a cross kick that leads to a game-winning try.
Ioane has a longer road to travel to become a World Cup wildcard but he's well enough equipped to make it.
Brothers Rieko Ioane, left, and Akira Ioane. Photo / Jason Oxenham.
What he could be by September is a devastating open field ball runner that the All Blacks unleash in the final quarter of tests.
There are plenty of big, mobile loose forwards in the world game who can cause a bit of damage if they are given the chance, but Ioane is possibly on a different level because of his speed, footwork, vision and power.
He's the sort of athlete who could be unstoppable if he can sit wide on the field and be free to run at a broken defence manned by outside backs.
Devastating in the same way Lomu was back in 1995 and much like Lomu 24 years ago, the biggest challenge for Ioane is to get himself fitter.
Everyone has a view why he hasn't yet come close to fulfilling his potential but the core of the problem is most likely that he needs to be leaner with an improved aerobic capacity.
If he can trim down and run for longer some of his other failings such as his scraggy tackling and low work rate could be immediately fixed.
He's a long shot but in the past it is the come from nowhere players who have had the biggest impact at the World Cup.
