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The All Blacks need to improve by 25 per cent over last year if they are to win the rugby World Cup , coach Graham Henry says.
New Zealand's failure to put a team in the final of the Super 14 championship over the weekend was a good reality check, Henry told National Radio today.
"It keeps people's feet on the ground and stops any complacency, so it's probably a good thing for the All Blacks," he said.
South Africa have two teams in the final for the first time since Super rugby began in 1996 after the Sharks beat the Blues 34-18 and the Crusaders were humbled 12-27 by the Bulls yesterday.
Henry sidestepped saying whether those results gave South Africa -- one of the All Blacks' strongest World Cup rivals -- a big psychological advantage going into the tournament, which starts in September.
"They have improved considerably, Super 14 teams are the measuring stick on the international sides and we expected that," Henry said.
"We have been saying that for some time now.
"It is a reality check for New Zealand rugby people that these things are never automatic, the World Cup is never automatic, we haven't won it for a long time, 20 years I guess."
Henry confirmed he would field his strongest side for the upcoming test matches against France and Canada and expected the same from South Africa and Australia in the Tri-Nations.
"For sure, everyone will be putting out their strongest teams, it's a shakedown for the rugby World Cup.
"(The Tri-Nations) will be major test matches, they are major test matches every year, so things haven't changed, really."
He also reiterated the thinking behind the All Blacks' conditioning programme which took 22 elite players out of the Super 14 for at least seven weeks.
That was felt in some quarters as contributing to the failure of New Zealand teams as the returning players failed to re-integrate effectively and were short of match-play.
"I don't know that there's been a lot of comments, there's been comments occasionally about those sort of things but the conditioning window's there for the World Cup," Henry said.
"We are hoping guys will peak in August-September. They are not expected to peak in May so that was the reason for the conditioning window -- so that these guys haven't played 30-odd games during that calendar year and if they had done that, they would have fallen over.
"So hopefully, they will peak at the right time of the year, which is obviously September-October."
Henry said World Cup preparations were on track but " if we don't keep on improving, other teams will pass us and that's what they are trying to do.
"One of the examples are South Africa but there are others, the French, Irish, Australians and so on.
"You can never rest on your laurels, and so our objective is to keep on improving and we hope to do that through the test matches and Tri-Nations and on to the World Cup.
"We need to improve 20-25 per cent if we are going to be World Cup champions at the end of the year so there's a lot of work to be done but at the moment we can't do any more than we are doing."
Some of the criticisms raised about his programme were because it had been " a problem with New Zealand fans for years -- they don't think anybody else can play (but) of course they can. That's why we haven't won (the World Cup) for 20 years."
- NZPA
