All Blacks captain doesn't care how the Rugby World Cup final goes Sunday morning,'as long as we win' he says. McCaw also isn't thinking about his or other senior players retirement with all his attention going into preparing himself and his team to play the Wallabies.
It's easy to imagine in those final few minutes before the referee knocks on the All Blacks' changing room door tomorrow morning, Richie McCaw giving a spine-tingling thunderous speech.
His version of Henry the Vs "Once more unto the breach", pleading with his men to throw themselves into one last 80-minute battle. Easy to imagine, but it won't happen.
McCaw is not that type of captain. In 109 tests at the helm, he's never thought that words should be his means of inspiring others. Words are for conveying messages -- instructions about what is desired and required technically and tactically.
His communication is direct, clear and functional. The All Blacks leadership team, in conjunction with their mental skills coach Gilbert Enoka, have spent hours focusing on how they should relate to each other and the wider team in the heat of battle.
Their conclusion has been that it's best when everyone sticks to the point -- keeps it brief, simple and absolutely clear what they want. Even Shakespeare would struggle to dramatise McCaw the orator, but it's this refusal to be clouded by emotion that has been the secret to the success of his captaincy.
Who doesn't love the notion of a swashbuckling, fearless, square-jawed hero, exhorting others to give their souls?
Richie McCaw following the Bledisloe Cup during The Rugby Championship match between the All Blacks and the Wallabies. Photo / Getty Images
But leadership in test football doesn't require that kind of valour. It is, at least in the business of getting people to do what you want, an acquired art of being economical yet highly effective with words.
It's a phenomenally difficult skill that McCaw makes appear ridiculously easy.
Since the All Blacks won the last World Cup, they have become the masters at winning those 50:50 games that stay in the balance until one team finally loses their nerve.
Rarely, if at all, has it been the All Blacks who have cracked and 99.9 per cent of the reason for that is McCaw's calm and poise in even the most desperate situations.
In Dublin two years ago, the All Blacks had, by any stretch of the imagination, no chance of winning when they trailed by five points with 30 seconds to go and didn't have the ball.
One man, McCaw, didn't feel the remotest sense of panic. When referee Nigel Owens penalised Ireland on the All Blacks 10-metre line, the clinical, supremely accurate riposte by the All Blacks to score the greatest pressure try of all time was the perfect illustration of why McCaw is the best captain of this or any other age. Through the calmness of his demeanour, the clarity of his expectations and power of his self-belief, he instilled in 14 men the conviction that they could pull off the impossible if they too stayed exclusively task focused.
The younger players on the field for those last minutes were in awe of their skipper in the immediate aftermath. He had been their lighthouse in the fiercest storm, guiding them safely through water that appeared to them to be too treacherous to survive.
"From our point of view we talked about the fact there would be a chance and we would have to be good enough to take it," was McCaw's matter-of-fact response to the 24-22 victory. "In rugby you are never going to have the momentum for 80 minutes. It is always going to swing back and I guess our job was to wait for that chance to make it happen."
PERHAPS IT'S the combination of his Scottish heritage and South Island farm upbringing that gives McCaw that enviable ability to endlessly rationalise and process to find the right course of action even when under the most intense pressure. Why he is how he is, though, isn't a big question on the eve of the World Cup final.
The only reason to ask would be for fear that it is not permanent and may not surface tomorrow morning when a nation's nerves will be jangling. But there's no need to be unsure.
There's no guarantee the All Blacks will win, but there's near certainty they won't collapse mentally. It just isn't going to happen because McCaw won't let it.
He didn't let it happen against France or South Africa and on the biggest stage on the biggest night in four years, McCaw will be in his element.
These days he strides that netherworld between his teammates and management -- occupying a sort of mezzanine floor between the two. He's slightly removed from his peers which may be partly conscious, partly his age, but he's not aloof or disconnected.
That much is clear in the way his teammates are happy to publicly rib his music and fashion choices -- creating the impression they think of him as their much loved, but curiously misguided big brother.
Richie McCaw with girlfriend Gemma Flynn. Photo / Supplied
There's a bewilderment he can be so good at certain things and then so bad at others.
Even in jest, the respect that comes through is monumental and whether he's cultivated this position or it has organically developed, McCaw has become a man for whom his teammates will run through brick walls.
The final is his time to do what he does -- to exude the most extraordinary calm that will seep into his teammates and perplex the Wallabies who will wonder why he's not feeling any pressure.
It will be McCaw, with one hand on referee Owens shoulder, leaning in to make his point, who will win the All Blacks the benefit of the doubt on those toss-of-a-coin calls.
It will be McCaw, in those moments of pressure that will inevitably come -- those periods when the Wallabies will be hammering at the door -- who deliberately and slowly will tell his players to think of nothing else but the next task.
2007: Richie McCaw and George Gregan. Photo / Brett Phibbs
He won't cajole them to work harder or berate them for not working hard enough. He won't remind them of the occasion or labour what's at stake.
There will be eye contact and direct, clear instructions. There will be no ambiguity of language either verbally or physically, and as he holds court, 14 men around him will sense his calm and let it become theirs.
Heads will be brought back into the game and the All Blacks machine will find a way to deal with whatever predicament it's in.
"It's pretty well-documented what I think," says All Blacks coach Steve Hansen.
"I think he's probably the greatest player we've ever had play the game, certainly for New Zealand.
"As a leader, he copped a bit of flak in 07. In my mind, leaders aren't made, they are grown. You're not born a leader, you learn through your experiences, and a lot of those experiences can be negative ones that you have to learn pretty sharply from.
"He copped a lot of flak in 07, he's grown through that adversity. He is now probably one of the great leaders of all time, to go with being a great player. And he's a good bloke, so he's got the trifecta," says Hansen.
2007: Richie McCaw and Graham Henry front the media after the World Cup. Photo / Getty Images
The inspirational part of McCaw is the way he plays. If Shakespeare was still around, he'd take the reader into the maelstrom of the battle for it is here that McCaw makes an emotional connection with his teammates.
Since he took the job in 2006, he's been adamant the foundation of his leadership is his form. To effectively lead, he says, he has to be the best player.
He's been that for 15 years. Even now, on the cusp of turning 35 and in a team full of superstars, his contribution is rarely topped.
The video clip promoted by foreign media of McCaw supposedly striking Springbok flanker Francois Louw with his elbow in the semifinal, was more revealing than it transpired. What it showed was that McCaw is almost like Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator. From making one tackle, he was on his feet in a flash, his eyes focused on the new ball carrier who was going to be hunted down.
He is now probably one of the great leaders of all time, to go with being a great player. And he's a good bloke, so he's got the trifecta.
McCaw didn't even see Louw and it's that predatory instinct and almost machine-like tenacity that his peers are constantly and genuinely amazed at.
"He's a bloke that keeps trying for the best," Ma'a Nonu said when asked what motivated him as an All Black.
"I think he's the best rugby player that's played the game and he's still playing at the top of his game and being part of that and knowing him and watching him play just inspires me more."
Everything has changed in the modern game except maybe one thing -- that peer respect can only be earned on the field. The measure of an All Black, ultimately, remains what's delivered on match day. Training the house down is great. Going through the recovery sessions with the requisite professionalism is admirable, but ultimately, none of that counts for much if the tank isn't emptied on game day.
2003: Richie McCaw in the wars. Photo / Getty Images
McCaw has delivered 147 tests where, without exaggeration, he's not had a bad one. He's pushed himself to the limit and often beyond, leaving his teammates spellbound.
"We were sitting on the bench wondering how he throws his body around," said fellow loose forward Jerome Kaino after the test in Apia this year where McCaw was the only player to not wilt in the oppressive conditions.
"There were a few times I made a tackle and I was on top of him and he got up before me ... I don't know how he does it."
THE WORLD Cup final will be McCaw's last test. Not that he wants to talk or think about that.
"I've purposely not gone into that because I wanted to make sure I didn't get hung up in what could be or might be," he says. "At this tournament I was keen to turn up as if I still had games to come.
"I'll have to make a decision [about his future] when I get home. I really want to play this tournament and this weekend as best as I can. You've still got to do the same things you do if you're going to play for years ahead and not think this is the last time, last time. That hasn't entered my head this week at all. I've made no secret of the fact that I'm going to have a good reflection on things but I just want to get this week right."
Richie McCaw and Dan Carter celebrate after winning The Rugby Championship. Photo / Getty Images
And really, given his achievements and standing in the game, there was no other place McCaw's career could finish satisfactorily. It had to be a World Cup final and as far as New Zealanders are concerned, it has to be a victory in a World Cup final.
To become the first captain to lift the Webb Ellis twice would be typical McCaw and yet while he's done it once before, he can only see limited advantage in that.
"The only thing you take out of being in a final before is how deep you have to dig to get across the line," he says. "That's the only thing you know. At some point -- and last week we had a bit of it -- it comes down to making sure you win one or two moments which could be the difference, and Saturday may be exactly that.
"It doesn't get much bigger than a World Cup final. It's exciting. We left home eight weeks ago, or whatever, with the goal of getting ourselves to play in this game. As a rugby player, who wouldn't want to play in a World Cup final. Twickenham is a hell of a place to play. I've always loved playing there, and the atmosphere in front of 80-odd thousand people.
"You look at all the teams that have won -- they've had to dig pretty deep, and that's what we know we're going to have to do this week. It's not about doing something magical, it's about doing your job when it counts."
