KEY POINTS:
In an earlier column this year, I said the World Cup would turn out to be all about the All Blacks' "top two inches".
It was, wasn't it? The top two inches went missing. It was one of those test matches where they did a lot right but
so much wrong.
Ali Williams was the player of the match, I thought, an outstanding display. Pity it was in a test match with such a poor result, but I take my hat off to Williams who is a player I have criticised in the past.
Luke McAlister was Dickhead of the Day, I thought. Oh, he did some good things, I guess, but he made mistakes of the running, passing, kicking and decision-making type.
I'd put Dan Carter in the "poor" category. Two years ago, he was the top first five-eighths in the world - no question, no contest. But that performance of his, probably not helped by carrying a calf injury, was dismal by his standards and I'd say he'd struggle to be placed in the world's top 10 after that.
Some of you will be thinking I'm a bit harsh. But I blame the players first and the coaches second. The referee? He wasn't good but he wasn't the problem. NZRU chairman Jock Hobbs should have shut up instead of questioning the referee.
Anyone still moaning about the forward pass can look again at the pass McAlister got when he sparked his own try. It was marginal at best.
No, from a former player's perspective - it is always you who are out there on the field. It's your game, your decisions, your jersey, your name and reputation.
And they were mentally soft. That's where the top two inches came in. Look back on fairly recent All Black history and you don't need to search far to come up with names of All Blacks who were just so steely in their determination; cool, collected and with a game face forged in the heat of some real battles.
That was missing from the All Blacks in that quarter-final. Think of Buck Shelford, Sean Fitzpatrick, Grant Fox, hell, you don't even have to focus on the famous names. Guys like Mike Brewer were so focused and so full of that steeliness; that attitude and desire to succeed and the mental strength to make it happen.
The 2007 All Blacks didn't have that and here we have to bring the coaches in.
Rotation, reconditioning and just plain overdoing the sports science and the psychology - it all added up to a team who were being carried along by the All Black gravy train rather than forging their own mental toughness and not getting swept up in all the hype and hoopla.
My tour group were blown away when the All Blacks did their warm-up in Cardiff.
They couldn't believe how many trainers were running around on the field with the All Blacks. Eight or nine of them, by my count. A management team of 57. Instructions ferried out to the players during the game by the 'water boys'. No wonder they can't make the right decisions under pressure.
Have a look at halfback, first five and second five. I'd exempt Joe Rokocoko, Mils Muliaina and Leon MacDonald from this but I'd say Byron Kelleher, Carter and McAlister didn't have two brain cells to rub together for that game.
I saw former All Black coach John Mitchell's comments that he thought Kelleher didn't provide enough direction from halfback; that he didn't help McCaw with the leadership from the backline. I agree. Where was the leadership we all heard about?
And when they took Kelleher off and Brendon Leonard came on and it was obvious, too, that he didn't have the leadership ability or mental strength for that situation - and you'd expect that. He'd only been in the All Black squad for five minutes.
So what about all that rotation - 30 players who could play tests - and what about all that leadership? Absent with a capital A, I'm afraid.
No, you can curse the ref all you like and those morons who have apparently made death threats to referee Wayne Barnes need to go and shut a door on their necks several times. This was a defeat we engineered ourselves.
I was on the plane with Jonah Lomu afterwards. He said to me: "What about all those leg injuries?"
He meant that even the reconditioning hadn't seemed to work. There were trainers and medical staff all over the place but these "superbly fit athletes" still broke down. There's a body of thought that says you can only train for rugby by playing rugby and gearing your body for the knocks, rather than training like athletes and copping athletes' injuries.
They laughed at Laurie Mains in 1995 when he ran the shit out of us preparing us for the World Cup in South Africa.
Think the 2007 All Blacks were conditioned? I'd take Laurie's way. We were ready then. Physically and mentally.
