Watching these boys exciting as sucking prunes

The All Blacks season is upon us - how excited are you? Are you pumped? Jumping out of your skin? Thought not.

Being the best in sports, the top dog, requires a tremendous amount of work and discipline because it's not like Coca-Cola or KFC; there isn't a proven recipe. And the All Blacks brand is in serious trouble having been adulterated, cheapened, disrespected and marginalised to the point that they are no longer the piece de resistance in rugby's gallery.

Instead, they've been saddled with the label of being the biggest chokers in the short history of the Rugby World Cup. Instead of being supersized, the team that was once the big enchilada of world rugby has been downgraded to a taco.

The All Blacks have lost their winning edge. In the psychological department, their opponents just don't fear them any more. And when you've lost your mojo it takes years to get it back; just look at the Boston Celtics in the NBA. They won nine straight championships in the 1950s and '60s, their great centre Bill Russell owns 11 NBA championship rings and they continued their winning ways in the '70s and '80s with Larry Bird.

Then with some very poor leadership and dicey decisions from the front office (attention NZRU and Graham Henry) they suddenly fell off their perch and couldn't even make the playoffs for more than a decade. They're back now but it took a hell of a lot of heartache, time and effort to get there.

Will the All Blacks bounce back? As Rachael Hunter so eloquently espouses in her television commercial: "It won't happen overnight, but it will happen."

Meanwhile, like a flying stone hitting a windscreen, the cracks just keep spreading: All Blacks coach Henry, not surprisingly, supports the NZRU's chain-gang policy of not selecting players who head overseas (except Dan Carter of course). But tell me this: If you've got a good product why do you have to blackmail your players into staying? And is it wise to have one set of rules for certain marquee players and a closed shop for the lesser mortals?

But the real sugar in the gas tank of the big black machine is the drain of quality coaches - nobody is more stoic, more honest, more representative of those solid old school rugby values, the kind of values that once made the All Blacks the bedrock of world rugby, than Robbie Deans.

So, when a man of his calibre doesn't feel that he got a fair suck of the sav after all he's done for New Zealand rugby, it's probably safe to say the problems inside the organisation run deep.

And the real irony here is every time the camera swings around during an All Blacks test or press conference to focus on Henry's pinched-up prune of a face, the single foremost thought in everyone's mind is gonna be one of failure: there's the guy who didn't bring home the bacon and then failed to show any remorse.

It's a re-run that's gonna play for the entire season - I can hardly wait.

- © Fairfax NZ News