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Whatever reasons are offered for the latest World Cup failure, lack of finance will not be one. An estimated $50 million was pumped into the 2007 campaign.
Such massive resources have backed no other coach in All Black history - and yet this was New Zealand's least successful campaign.
Since taking over the job in 2003, All Black coach Graham Henry has been granted unprecedented leeway in preparing the team. He has been supported with a bloated coaching staff and a $20 million high-performance unit, while the players have reaped the benefits of a vastly improved collective contract.
Under the terms of the new collective, the players receive $7500 for every week they are assembled with the All Blacks.
With the All Blacks together for about 17 weeks a year, the New Zealand Rugby Union pays out almost $4 million in match fees alone.
The players also receive guaranteed retainers that would average out across the squad at about $200,000 a man, for a total of $6 million.
The permanent 15-strong extended management team cost the NZRU an estimated $2 million in wages, with a number of additional consultants used on an ad hoc basis, taking the annual total of running the All Blacks to about $12.5 million in wages alone.
The NZRU pumped record sums into the All Blacks during Henry's reign as a result of its obsession with winning the World Cup.
Failure in 2003 stung the union, as it had in 1999, 1995 and 1991. It was agreed that 20 years without a World Cup was too long, so winning this tournament was made a priority - one deemed worth making sacrifices elsewhere to achieve that goal.
That obsession at executive level led to Henry being granted permission to take an extended tour party of 32 to Europe in 2004. In 2005, he took 35 instead of 30 players and, last year, there was a late decision to award two more touring places, so 32 travelled. That decision came after Henry was allowed to run two teams for the first three tests of 2006, assembling 39 players and adding about $250,000 in fees onto the union's bill. Henry ended up using 67 players in his four years.
All these extended tour groups pushed the bill ever higher, as did the decision to pull 22 All Blacks out of the opening rounds of this year's Super 14. Extra players had to be brought in and paid for when the constant rotation of the test side provoked a decline in public interest, leaving tickets unsold and TV audiences reduced.
Also, by 2006, the union's long-term currency hedging deal expired and they posted a near-$5 million loss with another expected this year.
But despite this phenomenal support, the All Blacks crashed out in Cardiff, one round earlier than ever.
"We are disappointed, but realistic, and understand the better side won on the day and a lot of credit goes to them," said Henry after the defeat. "We gave it our best shot and it wasn't good enough. That's the fact of the matter and we have to live with it, accept it and get on."
Those words will provide little solace for the NZRU, which took a major financial gamble putting so much cash behind the All Blacks' World Cup bid.
The only "bonus" is the NZRU now doesn't have to stump up the $100,000-a-man bonus if the All Blacks had won the World Cup.
