KEY POINTS:
Fred "the needle" Allen's predictions:
Fred "the needle" Allen is right behind the All Blacks and says with their quality coaching and strong forward pack, they will win the World Cup.
"I've had some good packs in my time too but this is a good pack. And they have such speed on the wings too. We've got brilliant backs. Any side that's got Carter is very fortunate.
"They used to talk about Wilkinson but he'd be streets ahead of Wilkinson, his defence is so strong," Mr Allen said.
He said the coaching staff are top class but the amount of training done nowadays is completely different to the way it was in his day.
"You weren't allowed to train on the Wednesday before an international. You were allowed to gather," Mr Allen said.
He said sometimes they would have a run and before the match they would have a talk.
"But now they assemble and have all the time in the world and fair enough too," Mr Allen said.
But the rules have also changed and some of them need to be looked at.
"This tackle off the ball is shocking. When the ball is nowhere near, you see them barging into each other. No wonder they get wild.
"That and the scrummaging laws have definitely got to change. There's too much of this re-setting and lets face it, this touching hands, they'll be kissing one another soon," Mr Allen said.
The All Blacks will make the final but as to their opponents, Mr Allen's pick has changed since the beginning of the season.
"I thought we could probably send a couple of sides that would feature in the final but South Africa has improved a lot and France on their home ground are a very, very hard side to beat," Mr Allen said.
Final prediction
Final: All Blacks vs South Africa
Result: All Blacks by 6 points.
Fred Allen's All Black career
(Source: www.allblacks.com)
Full Name: Frederick Richard Allen
Born: February 9, 1920
Position: Five-eighth
All Black Debut:September 14, 1946
Matches: 21, 21 as captain
All Black points: 21, 7 tries.
YOUR PREDICTIONS
It's only weeks away from the Rugby World Cup and we want to hear your predictions of who will win. Who do you think will be in the final and what do you think the score will be?
We'll run your predictions online and you could be the winner by picking the right score.
The winner gets to the right to call themselves the Rugby Brain of New Zealand... and our sports team at nzherald.co.nz will also rustle up a prize for the most accurate prediction.
