It is to do with the importance of the sport to a nation which identifies and values itself through one sport more than any other and it is to do with the success that culture has generated. Everyone who represents his or her country feels huge pride, but there is something about pulling on an All Black shirt that seems to be transformative.

How else to explain an extraordinary winning record that is unmatched in elite team sport, an overall success rate of better than three wins in every four matches means there have been no real lean periods. The All Blacks always have to win.

Yet they are still only flesh and blood and in no other environment has that been exposed more than at World Cups.

Since the first tournament they have been viewed as the world’s number one side every time – officially so since rankings were brought in 12 years ago –yet after victory in that inaugural event they were unable to win it again until they were back on home soil last time around.

They have to be aware of that, just as they must be of the fact that their antipodean big brother in all aspects of their relationship other than rugby union has only ever won this tournament as far from home as it is possible to be and only Australia’s Wallabies have ever have won a World Cup final in the UK.

Consider, then, the pressure on the other 13 men in the starting XV, the other 21 in the match 23 as they pull on those black shirts knowing the responsibility they carry not just in their own bids to make history but to ensure that Dan Carter gets the chance to end his career by making up for missing out on the 2011 final through injury and that Richie McCaw, the only player who is definitely considered to have surpassed Carter’s achievements as an All Black, also ends his career on a high.

Kieran Read, the man expected to take over the captaincy from McCaw having enjoyed a 100 per cent record in 10 matches when standing in for him, but who has not been in his best form as this tournament, is apparently one target for particular Australian attention and there will be others.

If there is any mental vulnerability anywhere in the All Black team no opponents will know better how to expose it than those from the country that invented sledging.

McCaw, Carter and Read have heard it all before and will be unaffected but it is not the strongest links that are most likely to be targeted for a word or two.

Consider, for example, Joe Moody, the prop who was called into their squad just a fortnight ago and admitted this week that playing in the final is “surreal”. Nehe Milner-Skudder has meanwhile been short-listed, along with Scotland’s Mark Bennett, for World Rugby’s ‘breakthrough player of the year’ award, but by definition that is because he is new to the scene.

If there is a weak link the Aussies can find it and it is fair to say, too, that only once at this tournament have these All Blacks performed as we knew they could, in the quarter-final rout of France which earned comparisons with arguably the greatest team of all time, their 1995 side, not least because of Julian Savea’s Jonah Lomu impersonation that day.

Admittedly only the All Blacks could have been criticised for performances like that against a very competitive Tonga side when they ran in five second half tries, but found much of the focus was on the time it took them to get going when scoring just two to be comfortably ahead at the interval.

That, though, is what the pressure of being All Blacks is all about... and has sometimes made that jersey a heavy burden to carry when it comes to the cut-throat business of knockout competition far from home.