Bill McLaren never forgot his first sight of the All Blacks. That was in 1935 when he was a schoolboy in Hawick. It was only the third New Zealand tour of Britain and Ireland, though the first by the team that came to be known as the “Invincibles” had taken place thirty years before. Now they were in Hawick to play the South of Scotland. “They were captained,” he wrote in his Autobiography, “by Jack Manchester, a towering figure in a dark-brown scrum-cap who led out his team for the game carrying the ball in one enormous hand. I can still remember the hushed awe that pervaded the ground as he walked on to the pitch. We local lads had never seen anything like it.”
Familiarity means that this “hushed awe” may no longer be experienced. The days when a tour from New Zealand or South Africa or Australia was a rare and wonderful event are long gone. Now they flit in and out every autumn and we are also accustomed to watching internationals in the South Hemisphere on TV. New Zealand are almost as familiar to us as our friends and rivals in the Six Nations. Yet where New Zealand at least are concerned this familiarity has done little to diminish the respect – often fearful respect with which we regard them.
There is a mystique about them, a mystique so powerful that you feel that New Zealand start every match a converted try, 7-O, ahead. Alternatively, if a handicapping system was to be introduced, they would, depending on the rating of the opposition, start every match a score or two behind, and you would still back them to win. England have played them 41 times before this weekend’s World Cup semi-final and won just 7 of these matches. Only France of northern hemisphere countries have beaten New Zealand more often – 12 times – but then they have played more matches against them – 61 in all.
Even the name by which they are commonly known – the All Blacks – inspires awe.
