KEY POINTS:
It has taken almost a month, but the All Blacks are at last in genuine rugby country.
Toulouse, unlike Corsica, Marseille, Lyon, Aix-en-Provence and Edinburgh where the All Blacks have been so far this World Cup, is definitely a rugby town.
It is home of the world's richest rugby club, Stade Toulousain, which has an annual budget of around 17 million Euros. That equates to about $31m, which is roughly what the New Zealand Rugby Union spends contracting all 140 of its professionals.
The comparison puts in context the paradoxical dynamic of the global player market - the Northern Hemisphere has all the financial clout while the Southern Hemisphere has all the talent.
The great worry for the suits back in New Zealand is that every ambitious club in France - and there is no shortage - wants to emulate the financial model of Toulouse.
Most big clubs in France are funded by the largesse of their sugar daddy owners; successful businessmen who buy rugby teams as vanity products to boost their profile and stroke their egos. It makes for a volatile environment where players are at the mercy of the president's mood and stories are rife throughout French rugby of all sorts of random acts of lunacy committed by the moneymen.
One such tale, perhaps apocryphal, recounts how a star player returned to his deluxe lodgings after a run of poor games to find the locks had been changed. The president, in his exasperation, had decided to shift the player in question to the poorest part of town, in a squalid pad next to some unsavoury types. He had to play his way out of the slums.
Such acts are not prevalent in Toulouse where the club is mainly funded by the supporters. There are several dedicated Stade Toulousain shops in town selling a range of club gear and most weeks the team plays in front of a full house. There is also a host of corporate sponsors backing the team, such as Peugeot, Nike, Orange and Air France and the club even has a dedicated TV channel.
The business model is sustainable long-term which is why they have been able to buy the likes of Byron Kelleher and possibly Stephen Larkham without ever blinking at their pay requests. That community backing also makes the club the focal point of the city and explains why most residents are pretty clued up about the game. There seems to be mixed views about the pending arrival of Kelleher.
The fact it is so easy to gauge local opinion is in stark contrast to the other venues the All Blacks have stayed. The big game in Marseilles while the All Blacks were there was France's clash with Scotland in the qualifying rounds for Euro 2008. Lyon is home of the French football champions, Aix is a town devoted to renaissance art and the day the All Blacks played Scotland in Edinburgh, Hibernian were also playing Celtic which was a much bigger deal for most of the locals.
And, while it is unlikely to be a factor when the great post-tournament dissection begins, there's just a slight niggle the All Blacks didn't ensconce themselves in Toulouse earlier in the week.
The great complaint from 2003 was that the players felt isolated and bored spending all their time in Melbourne, a city with no rugby heritage.
Much of this campaign has been planned with that in mind and it just seems that with the competition now reaching the pointy end, the players could have done with a few more days in a city where rugby is a passion and excitement about the World Cup is in your face.
Toulouse is certainly a blue-collar town; the giant Airbus base on the fringe of the city is the major employer.
The city appears to have a prominent underclass, with vagrants sleeping rough in the centre and down by the Canal Midi. There is no catering for tourists with English on the menus and no swanky part of town set aside for the rich.
Toulouse is very real, unashamed of its roots and proud of its rugby team. The All Blacks might have missed a trick staying in Aix-en-Provence until Thursday night there was plenty of energy and excitement in Toulouse to be soaked up and reused in the weeks to come.
