There is a lot to admire, from afar, about the way the All Blacks have embraced their first week in the UK ahead of the start of the Rugby World Cup. A million selfies sure add up to an awful lot of social media goodwill but one wonders this: will any amount of charm ever be enough to give the New Zealanders the nod as the neutrals' team? It's tempting to say not on this patch of the rugby world. Not with their win rate.
People don't look upon the All Blacks with that kind of hokey sentimentality, do they? They are admired for their record, sure. They are revered in some places, too - places where granddads still tell stories of the marauding hordes of hard-nosed farmers and brash colonials who came to town and cut the locals to shreds on muddy pitches under dark grey skies. New Zealand has built its rugby reputation on results, not on charm.
That this team is trying to turn on the thousand-watt smile perhaps says it's time for a change of tack. It also says plenty about the lessons they have learned from previous campaigns - and those lessons have been painful. In 2007 they hid themselves away, only to emerge in Edinburgh clad in grey, blinking and weary from their exertions in exotic destinations like Corsica and Aix-En-Province.
Back in 1991, by most accounts, they stalked around the UK po-faced and peremptory, the last vestiges of the self-perception of greatness still hanging around them like a burley trail of Brut 33. They had no chance of winning the public over. The Lansdowne Road crowd on the day of the semifinal was evidence of that. They swung in behind the Australians - the very team that a week earlier had knocked out the home side.
