KEY POINTS:
The rivalry between Graham Henry and Robbie Deans will cast a glorious shadow over Saturday's rugby stoush and for once you feel certain the banquet will live up to the invitation.
Something outrageous just has to happen in Sydney. You can sense it in the bones. Then again ...
How often do the great occasions fall flat, while contests that last in the memory emerge out of relatively mundane build-ups.
You just never can tell where the sparks will fly and they don't always emerge from the largest match.
Overly-heightened expectations might even encourage disappointment. Of late, entire world tournaments have crashed. How could anyone, for instance, manage to hold a dead duck cricket tournament in the game's calypso capital?
This big rugby bash can't go wrong though, surely, because the rest of us won't let it.
The talkback hosts will need a bigger board, or is that a bigger broadband these days, come Sunday morning and it will keep roaring in the weeks ahead. News writers and columnists have fodder aplenty.
Who's the best coach, have the Deans' brigade (hand up here) got it wrong, will Sydney be portrayed as Robbie's Revenge leaving Henry a goner and the pre-ordained Steve Hansen ready to take over, and has the NZRU backed a Henry and/or Hansen loser that must keep running until it falls. Will the nerve-ripping tension around the build-up seep into the players' behaviour on the field. Most importantly, will Australia get the first laugh at New Zealand's expense.
Rugby has inadvertently struck gold. Coaching disputes have often been left to provide the best rugby rivalries in this country.
John Hart versus Alex Wyllie, John Hart versus Laurie Mains, John Mitchell versus the English language, Mitchell versus Henry.
But none of these combinations stack up against this one, because Henry versus Deans is not only out there on the test footy field, for many of us it is at the heart of the debate on how the current New Zealand rugby administration conducts its affairs.
Rivalries are the cornerstone of great sport and we should celebrate this one especially as rugby players hardly fall over themselves to fire our imaginations.
Even with the few classics, such as Zinzan versus Buck, it was everyone else who was left to do the serious talking.
So the contests have often centred on the more obvious personalities of coaches, even though they rarely fan the flames themselves, or not overtly.
As Henry and Deans will no doubt say, it's not personal from their point of view this week. And they are right.
It can't be. Deans, for instance, is hardly going to fire the Aussie troops up with stirring speeches of his undoing across the Tasman. The champion coach would be dog tucker at the merest hint he saw his new job as a chance to right a personal wrong rather than being about the Australian rugby cause.
There may be a moment of greater then normal satisfaction for the victor, granted, before he quickly remembers that there are endless battles to come.
Henry has the greater cause for concern because another loss will put his faltering reign on very slippery skids. A bad loss should bring calls for his head following the World Cup capitulation and the loss to a severely limited South African side in Dunedin. There are already renewed question marks over the selections, particularly that of Jerome Kaino given the way Henry went at great lengths to wave the rugged Jerry Collins off.
But tactics and techniques will dominate the coaches' thinking rather than all the palaver that has gone on before and what might ensue. And the fascinating aspect is the inside knowledge Deans will have of the All Blacks.
No coach in the world will know Dan Carter and his game the way Deans does, not to mention how Andy Ellis can be further exposed. Deans will also know plenty about the All Blacks lineout, which is spearheaded by Crusaders duo Ali Williams and Brad Thorn.
It will be interesting to see and surmise if he has used this to Australia's advantage or whether a little bluff may also be involved. It is also hard to believe that the Wallabies coach's inside knowledge isn't on the All Blacks' minds. Then again, Australia would be unwise to rely too heavily on the secret squirrel stuff at the expense of concentrating on their advancing game.
It shapes as magnificent stuff to chew on before, during and afterwards.
As for conducting the personal rivalry, that remains in our hands and we ain't going to drop it just yet.
