Most compelling on earth

“If there’s been a bad New Zealand side over the years, I must have missed it,” the Telegraph’s Paul Ackford writes, admitting to being “consumed by the All Blacks”. “You can sneer as much as you want, pretend that their excellence is born out of the fact that there is sod-all else to do in a New Zealand winter, that they’ve pillaged the Pacific Islands for their talent, that most of their iconic players — Jonah Lomu, Tana Umaga, Carl Hayman — struggled to string two syllables together let alone a sentence, and you would be right. But that doesn’t for one microsecond undermine their brilliance. Forget their atrocious record in World Cups. New Zealand are the best, the most compelling side on the planet by a distance.”