Reputation built on blood and sweat of the Originals

The All Blacks play against Middlesex in their historic 1905 tour of Britain. Herald file picture

Precisely 100 years ago, the most influential team in the history of rugby - the New Zealand "Originals", touring under the captaincy of the great Dave Gallaher and playing a revolutionary form of the game inspired by the tactical genius of Billy Stead - met Surrey in a midweek fixture at the Athletic Ground in Richmond.

Some 11,000 spectators congregated in southwest London, only to have their afternoon's enjoyment wrecked by the referee, a self-important committee type by the name of Williams, who, in the words of a contemporary newspaper, "was evidently under the impression that everybody had come to hear him perform on the whistle". Where have we heard that before? The more things change, the more they stay the same.

But some of the things that changed in 1905 and the early months of 1906, when Gallaher's team won 34 of their 35 matches with the fairly startling points difference of 976-59, changed for ever. That tour transformed the way the old world thought about its team sport, and the way the visitors thought about themselves. Graham Henry, the current coach of the All Blacks, puts it better than anyone when he says: "They left home as colonials and returned as New Zealanders."

It seems fatuous to suggest that a country's coming of age was inspired by the deeds of 27 young men - farmers and boatbuilders, miners and foundrymen, blacksmiths and bootmakers and the odd Boer War veteran - on the rectangular mudheaps of the British Isles; that Aucklanders and Wellingtonians honour the 1905 tour in the way the French honour Bastille Day, not so much as an expression of their nationhood as the very definition of it. But to those far-flung folk blessed even with the slightest feeling for the games that people play - or to their minds, the only game worthy of the playing - the "Originals" stand at the heart of what it means to be a New Zealander.

"Just look at the old pictures," urged Wayne Smith, one of Henry's principal sidekicks, as the 2005 All Blacks checked into their Cardiff hotel for the start of the centenary tour. "The 1905ers could be us now, couldn't they? It's in the way they stand, the way they hold themselves, the competitive glint in their eyes." Does the history still resonate with the young players?

"Too bloody right, it does. As coaches we make it our business to ensure it resonates. This is a special tour, a trip shot through with significance for all of us lucky enough to be involved, and we'll be honouring the Originals during our time here - sometimes publicly, sometimes in a quiet way within the group. It's a very moving thing."

As romance would have it, these All Blacks begin their quest for a Grand Slam this weekend in the one city that repulsed them 100 years ago. Not that they have ever accepted that defeat, by the utterly decisive margin of 3-0, as a fair and honest reflection of proceedings. They believe they were robbed, as most great sides do when they cannot fathom how anyone might have the brass neck to beat them. They insist to this day that Bob Deans, a farmer from Canterbury, scored a legitimate equalising try during the second half, only to be fiddled out of it by some cheating Welsh forwards who dragged him back into the field of play before the referee, dressed in everyday clothes, huffed and puffed his way to the scene of the crime.

"We are," said Smith, awash with sarcasm, "about to release an amateur video that shows the incident from a fresh angle".

This was a none-too-oblique reference to the continuing altercation over the injury suffered by Brian O'Driscoll, the captain of the Lions, in the opening minute of the first test against the All Blacks in Christchurch. O'Driscoll suffered a dislocation of the shoulder after being dropped, tipped, dumped, speared, rammed or pile-driven on to, or into, the ground from a considerable height (delete as necessary, depending on your personal views and prejudices) by Tana Umaga and Keven Mealamu. While the Lions' management placed the two New Zealanders in the same category as The Acid Bath Murderer, their silver-ferned counterparts turned the blindest of blind eyes.

The All Blacks have brought many things to rugby since Gallaher, who would lose his life at Passchendaele in World War I, and Stead, who survived into his 80s, generously shared their accumulated wisdom by writing The Complete Rugby Footballer.

They were the first team to turn a mere test series into a mighty national calling, bringing the emotional force of an entire population to bear on the Springboks in 1956; they were responsible for an unprecedented flowering of forward play in the 1960s; they professionalised the art of physical conditioning at the 1987 World Cup, almost a decade before the sport went open; they set new standards of athleticism and dynamism in their back play at the 1995 tournament and have continued to do so ever since.

They have also brought a sense of dark menace to the game - a menace endorsed and encouraged by generations of coaches and managers who would rather eat their own children than discipline their own players.

Remember JPR Williams' face being sliced open by the fast-descending boot of John Ashworth; Phil de Glanville being cut to ribbons by the All Black pack during a brutal game in Redruth; Ali Williams trampling on Josh Lewsey's visage during England's famous victory in Wellington a little over two years ago. Many misdemeanours, very few guilty pleas, even fewer sentences.

New Zealand have never held a monopoly on this sort of thing. Traditionally speaking, the Springboks are more overtly bullying in their approach, the French more gratuitously vicious, the British and Irish perfectly willing to join in whatever fun and games might be occurring. Even the Australians have had their moments, although they claim to turn the other cheek these days. But All Black villainy has a dimension of its own, its ruthlessness more disconcerting, its practitioners - Kevin Skinner and Colin Meads, Mark Shaw and Wayne Shelford - more celebrated, in a chamber of horrors kind of way.

And this, of course, is the truth that dare not speak its name. The All Blacks exert their grip on the sporting imagination not because they are better than everyone else, although that has clearly been the case for at least 50 of the last 100 years, but because they are never anything less than dangerous, in every sense of the word. The Boks, the Tricolores, the Wallabies - all have revealed a soft centre at one time or another. The Blacks? Never. They are always, but always, devilishly difficult to beat and well-nigh impossible to beat up. Spectators are drawn to them because they can experience the delicious frisson of watching from a place where it is safe to be scared.

Last five matches

* December 2004: New Zealand 26 Wales 25, Cardiff

* November 2003: New Zealand 53 Wales 37, Sydney

* June 2003: New Zealand 55 Wales 3, Hamilton

* November 2002: New Zealand 43 Wales 17, Cardiff

* November 1997: New Zealand 42 Wales 7, London

- INDEPENDENT