KEY POINTS:
It's the brutality of being wrong. That's what the All Blacks are experiencing right now - and we are only in the early stages of unravelling the the 2007 RWC campaign.
Coach Graham Henry and his team are going through the pain of discovering that not only were their eggs in one basket but the basket also had a hole in it - much bigger than anyone ever expected.
The glassy-eyed stare of Dan Carter and the shocked, déjà vu look of Anton Oliver sitting on the sideline will live long in the memory. It was the look of the best in the world, discovering their dream was based on a false premise; that the 'genius' of rotation and reconditioning was predicated on faulty maths; that invincibility was an illusion.
They were stunned men, through whose minds realisation was beginning to seep that the best-prepared team in the world were actually underdone; that they lacked mental toughness in the intensity France brought to Cardiff. We had been too clever - too clever by half.
The reality is that the next coach will use some of the Henry concepts in the next campaign. Rotation - the biggest evil or the one most pursued to excess - and reconditioning have their valid points. In moderation. It now seems evident that, with the benefit of hindsight, Henry and co drank far too deeply from the cup of rotation and reconditioning. It was a useful tactic turned into wholesale strategy.
In the corporate world, a model of which the NZRU is fond, fulsome promises not accompanied by delivery inevitably lead to downfalls. Those well-intentioned souls saying that Henry and co need to be retained because they will learn from their mistakes have missed the point. Henry has said he was comfortable with his strategies and wouldn't change anything. Make no mistake - the 2007 Rugby World Cup campaign is as big a disaster as ever seen in New Zealand rugby.
The best team, the finest attention-to-detail preparation, the most money, an army of support staff and officials, the whole game of rugby in this country subjugated to the pursuit of a World Cup - and our worst finish ever.
Yet there hasn't been a rash of resignations. Henry, as always, will take his considered time and do it his way. CEO Chris Moller was already leaving. But CEO-designate Steve Tew isn't - and he has already been fingered by former CEO David Moffett as "Teflon" Tew, the man who gave Henry the path to excesses.
Tew has made no resignation noises, although NZRU chairman Jock Hobbs allowed that he (Hobbs) would resign if it was appropriate.
All Black manager Darren Shand has also been re-appointed and although many of New Zealand rugby's drums are beating hard for Robbie Deans as the next All Black coach, there is a mountain of rugby politics to be negotiated first. The NZRU is circling the wagons, holding a review - always planned, sure, but the cynical are now suggesting that this might be a way to roll Henry out and Steve Hansen in.
Some may see the beginnings of a Canterbury "mafia" here. Tew, Hansen and Shand are all Cantabrians and aligned. Deans is also a Cantabrian but, as former coach John Mitchell put it, has some "baggage" with the NZRU.
So, in spite of the well-meaning intentions of the 2000 or so who went to Christchurch Airport to welcome the All Blacks home in spite of their fall from grace, the bloodletting has only just started.
And none too soon. If the report is true that Henry knew about the Doug Howlett incident before the plane left Britain and yet still arrived home to talk about "role models", then it is clearly time this regime ended. Enough is enough.
The NZRU need to replace the coaching staff pronto and begin again the business of building anew. It can only do that by burying all connections with the last campaign and starting afresh - even if the next coach does use some or even all of the Henry concepts.
It's not that Henry is a bad coach - he is clearly very good indeed. But when the thing you hitch your wagon to disappears down a crevasse, you either go with it or you do not attempt to negotiate another crevasse. It's a credibility thing.
Taking time to consider a disaster does not change it from being a disaster. We need to find the path leading back to traditional All Black values, overgrown as it is with a jungle of science, technology and marketing-speak.
We need to ditch this all-encompassing focus on the World Cup; to let our best play together; to build combinations and the tungsten toughness of the mentally strong which wins tight, intense contests like that at Cardiff.
We need to lift our All Blacks out of the cosseted, over-marketed, over-hyped and over-attended players who have been affected, I believe, by being placed on such a pedestal, flattered by the marketers and the misplaced strategies which helped imbue minds with an aura of invincibility without the mental muscles to back it up.
I find myself thinking of Buck Shelford, having his testicles stitched up on the sideline before rejoining that famous test, also against France.
We need to find the way back to those with the mental strength to build the success that led to the All Black "brand" - before the brand seemed more important than the jersey and when that jersey was still a thing of rare honour; not something handed out as an experiment and which you wear before you go in search of sterling and euro. We have diluted the thing which made us strong.
If not, we will again suffer the brutality of being wrong.
