A couple of weeks ago, I was talking about the power of belief in driving sporting success. Last weekend, we witnessed what happens when belief becomes confused with a mantra; when an overriding approach becomes a set of instructions. Namely, what happens when that self belief crumbles.

Both Australia and New Zealand expected to win their World Cup games. They assumed that England and France would capitulate, with minimal fuss. In fact, their intrinsic approach was so self centred that when things weren’t going to plan, the players found themselves hamstrung by their inability to adapt to the stark reality; neither England, nor France were going to give up without a fight.

What was interesting for me, especially in the NZ vs France game, was that this mental aberration resulted in the NZ players overlooking the obvious. Forget any possible errors in refereeing – the missed forward pass, the sin binning – the fact of the matter was that for the last 5 minutes of the game, NZ were camped on the game and no one attempted a drop goal. All NZ needed to win was 3 points. They had the possession, the pressure and the players to achieve it. But they appeared to be so constrained by what was happening around them, that they couldn’t refocus.

Oh well, their loss is our gain!

Roll on Saturday…