Green Tea Party

The all blacks came into the professional era wedded to an amateur culture of pies, pints and near disdain for sports science. That all changed in 2004 when the coaching team and senior players influenced a revolution that has driven the highest personal standards.

Looking back now, it’s easy to see how off track the All Blacks were in the first decade of professionalism. Strangely, their big advantage in the amateur period was their professional attitude and culture.

Or at least, what helped the All Blacks in that late period of amateurism was that they were more professional than their international peers in attitude and discipline. They trained harder, smarter and spent longer working on their basic skills.

But they were still largely amateur in mindset when it came to the wider issues of lifestyle and holistic preparation. And it was this that came to hurt them in the first decade of the professional era.

The game transitioned but in many respects the All Blacks didn’t. They embraced professionalism, but only up to a point. They remained in much the same mindset that they had been in before the conversion.

Standards lifted, just not high enough. They trained more, but maybe still not enough to stay ahead of the chasing pack.

It wasn’t deliberate as such, more a  consequence of not fully understanding the extent to which players, coaches and managers could work to drive performance higher.

The bigger failing, however, was that the team and the wider professional rugby landscape were still mired in an amateur culture of pies, pints and scepticism bordering on ridicule towards sports science.

The concept of personal responsibility was anathema to most All Blacks. There was still this sense of entitlement that hard work should be rewarded with a big night on the booze. Knowledge of nutrition was limited or even if it was improved, many players continued to ignore best advice and ate what they liked when they liked.

There was no strong culture of working outside designated training times. Attention to detail was minimal and not many players had any appreciation of sports science as it related to recovery and rehabilitation.