The Little Way of the Best Rugby Nation

The original 1905 New Zealand All-Blacks rugby team toured Europe. (Public Domain)

By population, New Zealand is one of the world’s smaller nations, and it has one of the smallest economies among developed nations. In the modern era, when success in sports, like most other things, is usually dictated by population and wealth, New Zealand would seem to have little chance of excelling on the world stage in any popular sport. Yet its national rugby team is not only the world’s most successful, but the most successful national team in any sport. New Zealand rugby’s open secret offers insight not only to other nations, but to communities, institutions, and even families.

Mailboxes along a rural road in Lake Hawea, New Zealand speak to the small nation's tight-knit communities and shared rugby-focused values. (Podzemnik/CC BY-SA 4.0)

This secret can be summed up as leveraging littleness. In the context of rugby, New Zealand is a little country that maximizes the hidden advantages of smallness: a strong sense of identity, doing the little things right, and building up the smallest piece of society—the individual. In other words, it does big things by using its smallness to its advantage—relying on character instead of cash and on large souls instead of a large pool of athletes.

The New Zealand national rugby team acts a cohesive whole, whether that's during games or in practice. (江戸村のとくぞう/CC BY-SA 4.0)

Identity

A part of character is identity. Identity answers the question, “Who am I?” While it may seem odd, it makes sense intuitively: Smallness is essential to identity. The famous saying of the American anthropologist Margaret Mead comes to mind: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

There is a real truth to this thought. A small, tight community and eagerness for a shared cause seem to go together. Families are our smallest communities. The bonds within them are an example of how the deepest parts of our identities emerge from our being embedded in small groups. New Zealand rugby cultivates a sense of belonging in a way similar to a village, a group of friends, or family.

This 1905 photograph depicts the original All-Blacks training. (Public Domain)

Part of the intense identity fostered in New Zealand rugby is that it is tied to the country’s rural areas, to small towns and communities, where identity is naturally fostered. Many of the All Blacks hail from rural settings, and many of these are international stars. For example, Dan Carter was born in a small town called Leeston in Canterbury, on the South Island of New Zealand. Meanwhile, Kieran Read grew up in a small town on the North Island. There are the Barrett brothers: Beauden, Scott, and Jordie. They grew up on a small dairy farm. When the All Blacks won the World Cup in 2015, Beauden returned to the farm and drank the dairy’s milk right out of the trophy.

“Creamy white milk looks so good in the gold cup,” he said at the time, and the combination of world-coveted trophy and homegrown milk is a perfect analogy for the relationship of rugby and local identity in New Zealand.

Many bigger nations put a lot more resources into rugby, such as England, which fields more rugby players than the rest of the world combined. Yet New Zealand does so the most strategically, once again using its small size as an asset instead of a liability. The New Zealand Rugby Union sets standards not only for the national team, the All-Blacks, and the professional clubs, but even for rugby in grade schools. It also has very strict rules: It bans New Zealanders who play professionally in other countries from eligibility for the national team. The national team is such a point of pride for New Zealanders that many forego lucrative contracts with richer European clubs in order to wear the coveted black jersey. Even New Zealanders who play overseas feel a call to return as soon as their finances and professional development will allow it.

Furthermore, it’s not merely a top-down structure—the small nation works in tandem with the even smaller units of society that make it up. Rugby is a grassroots movement for New Zealanders, starting with myriad local rugby clubs and school teams.

Within this intensely local cultivation of the sport, attention is paid to the needs of the those of smaller size or with little talent. In order to accommodate the national passion to all who want to participate, New Zealand teams account for differences in build by instituting leagues divided by weight classes, as in boxing. To ensure that the less athletic also get to play, there are multiple levels of competition. Christchurch Boys’ High School, a state school in the city of Christchurch, fields more than 20 teams!

Doing the Little Things Right

A strong character requires knowing how to improve oneself, and improvement is built from small building blocks. It often means small and strategic advances in a particular skill. It is seen throughout every level of rugby in New Zealand. Unorganized pickup games are a constant. Given that many New Zealanders have some rugby experience, competitors are forced to keep practicing and improve. Fundamentals are paramount: The art of catching and passing quickly—the essential building block of rugby—is so emphasized in New Zealand that it’s sometimes reduced to one word, “catchpass.” This focus on fundamentals begins in “little leagues” and continues to national teams, which are notorious for going back to the basics again and again.

Continuous improvement is one of the hallmarks of All Blacks rugby to the point that they refuse to settle even when they are on top of the world. “When you’re on top of your game, change your game” was a common phrase in their locker room in the 2010s.

The 2023 Rugby World Cup between Namibia and New Zealand. (JaumeBG/CC BY-SA 4.0)

This big-hearted aspiration was founded on the tiny, incremental changes that are the essence of improvement. Steve Hansen, the coach who led the All-Blacks to a second consecutive World Cup win in 2015, began his campaign fresh off the previous World Cup victory in 2011. He faced the daunting prospect of motivating current world champions to improve themselves. He started by writing this simple challenge on a whiteboard: “Be the Most Dominant Team in the History of Rugby.” This was not accomplished all at once, but little by little over the following four years.

Virtues

Knowing who one is (identity), and how to make more of oneself (continual improvement) are essential to character. Yet character is first determined by virtue.

Just as identity and continual improvement require the individual’s cultivation little by little, so does the cultivation of virtue. Virtue is essential to New Zealand rugby. The national team’s greatest successes have occurred when virtues are prioritized over winning. Among these virtues are humility, self-sacrifice, and courage.

All Blacks team members Ben Smith (center, forward) and Shannon Frizell (back left) in a 2019 rugby match. (江戸村のとくぞう/CC BY-SA 4.0)

The All Blacks’ courage is, of course, represented in their physical fortitude when making tackles or risking their bodies for victory. New Zealand rugby is one that encompasses more than a century of toughness. Buck Shelford, a famous All Black from the 1980s, endured a severe injury to his crotch in a game against France and limped off to the sideline to get it stitched up. He returned to play in the very same game.

Nevertheless, the most impressive aspect of the All Blacks’ courage may be the way in which they prepare for and face pressure. Now every elite athlete knows that, in addition to his opponent, he faces the referee, possibly some family or personal traumas, and pure chance. The essence of handling pressure, in sports as in life in general, is facing the circumstances one cannot control, not allowing the resulting anxiety to overcome oneself, and then choosing and performing the best route to victory.

Sir Wayne "Buck" Shelford took one for the team in a rugby match. (Paora/CC BY-SA 4.0)

The All Blacks not only accept pressure but literally practice facing it. Similar to the way in which they develop athletic skills, All Blacks intentionally train, bit by bit, for increasingly difficult mental situations. As part of this training, they establish what they call “anchors,” seemingly insignificant physical actions that they intentionally and habitually associate with clear-headed mental states. For example, in the 2011 World Cup, each player developed some sort of mental “reset” to use when in a high-pressure situation. One player had a breathing and foot-stamping ritual; one would look out to the corner of the stands for a few seconds during a game-break.

Such practices were responsible for the grace under pressure they showed in defeating France in the World Cup final by one point. In this and in other difficult game situations, like being down by a significant score with minutes left to go, the All Blacks focus on what they can do in the moment and intentionally set aside worries to curtail panic. What it looks like on the world stage is a measureless courage; what it is, is a storehouse of small victories.

Self-sacrifice is likewise a virtue tied to small size, if only insofar as one will only sacrifice himself if he realizes that he is smaller than his ideals, his team, and the legacy he is part of. The All Blacks exhibit this virtue in many ways. Starting players don’t hesitate to help mentor and coach the very men competing for their positions. Theirs is the beautiful motivational motto, “to leave the jersey in a better place,” a constant reminder to all the players that their goal is not glory for themselves, but for their team. In the same 2011 World Cup final against France, the All Blacks captain, Richie McCaw, gave one of the most notable recent examples of such self-sacrifice, playing the last game on a broken foot.

Perhaps most surprising for a successful national sports team is how the All-Blacks evince humility, the classic little virtue. The veterans, not the rookies, “sweep the sheds,” that is, clean up the locker rooms after a game. Other practices reveal the cultivation of humility, such as remembering that “they don’t know all the answers”: Coaches and players check their pride at the door in order to ask each other for help, and sometimes, even to play a less glorious role for the sake of the whole team. Only recently, Beauden Barrett was informed that he would sit on the bench as a backup for an upcoming game against England. Beauden accepted this without complaint. As his coach said, “he took it like a true pro,” ready to do “whatever is required for this team,” instead of lashing out against the decision and thereby putting his personal pride before the good of the team.

Learning From All Blacks

When the All Blacks are at their best, winning is not the only point or even the main point but a test indicating whether they are being true to their legacy or not. The All Blacks pass this test often, in fact, more often than any other national rugby team. Moreover, they do so more often than any other national team in any sport whatsoever: Since their inception in 1903, they have won 77 percent of the time.

The way of the All Blacks is available to other small organizations like families, small businesses, and towns. Small towns can encourage and support their local organizations. Small businesses can think less in terms of limited resources and more in terms of how to most effectively use those resources; they can also prioritize slowly building up each individual worker. Families can remember to make the development of virtue nonnegotiable.

New Zealand rugby is a story of one nation that does the little things right. It’s a culture that focuses on cultivating the individual but always in context of the common good. New Zealand rugby proves that even a small group of people of strong character will always have a fighting chance of winning.

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