Mike Hosking: All Blacks deserve better than panicking, fickle fans

COMMENT: I have little doubt that Steve Hansen is leaving.

You don't pre-announce an announcement if you're staying. If you want to stay, you let the record do the talking. You get to the World Cup and win it, and then say I'm ready for the offers.

I hope I am wrong. Hansen, for those who forget (and clearly most people have given the commentary we have had this week over him, Kieran Read, the All Blacks in general) was the great worry when the legend that was Sir Graham Henry moved on.

No-one could replace him. These were dark and worrying days… until they weren't. Then we had the player exit, Richie McCaw and Dan Carter, those were dark and worrying days. Until they weren't.

And now, almost as though we are concussed, we lose a good game to Ireland, Hansen needs to go, and Read is not what he was and needs not to be captain or not be useless or whatever it is the critics bang on about.

It's almost like we are trapped in a cycle of permanent moroseness. We are desperate to worry about how it's all going to go wrong for our national side.

This is the side that has won the last two World Cups, is the number one side in the world and has been for nine years, but now it's all over? Things are hopeless and we need sackings, resignations and retirements.

Get a grip. Our expectations are hopelessly unrealistic. If you also remember, we used to angst about winning the World Cup.

Until 2011, we'd win all our games then bomb out at cup time. And we collectively, if you remember, came to the conclusion that really in the grand scheme of things all that really matters was that cup.

If we won that cup we could lose every game in the ensuing four years. But the cup was what really counted.

So in 2011 we win, then we win again in 2015, and suddenly that original thinking is out the window. We are goldfish. We are fly-by-nighters. We have no faith, we are not consistent.

Having faith in a team is part of the deal. You're not there for the ride, only on the good days.

You don't desert the ideal when you lose, and yet look at this week. We've lost the plot.

These are the best players in the world, with the best coach in the world, that makes up the best team in the world. So we lost, just to Ireland, big deal.

I'm as confident today as I ever was. This is a class operation, that will do what no one has done next year in Japan: three wins in a row.

I will most likely be there, and when we win, will be more than happy to tell all the doubters "I told you so".