'This is our time': All Blacks 'desperate to perform' after turbulent 18 months

The last 18 months have been a wild ride for the All Blacks, record losses have come on either side of an 11-game unbeaten run that includes two Rugby Championship wins, all of which have amalgamated into a spot just outside the World Cup favourites conversation.

There was a brief, glimmering moment in August when the three-time champions were within reach of their familiar number-one world ranking. That moment was shot down by the Springboks at Twickenham.

Ian Foster has been through it all, a review by New Zealand Rugby almost ended the head coach’s tenure after losing the 2022 Steinlager Series to Ireland, but with the promise of new assistants, Foster was backed to lead the team through to the World Cup.

The newcomers in the coaches’ box were Joe Schmidt and Jason Ryan, the pair’s influence quickly became apparent after a short turnaround and a record loss to Argentina in Christchurch.

All the highs and lows of the dramatic year and a half could make for “one of the great stories” if the All Blacks are to go all the way and lift the Webb Ellis Cup in France.

“We feel nothing but support inside the camp,” Foster told The Front Row Daily Show. “We know, if you go back to the middle of last year, losing the series to Ireland, and everything that went on around that, and suddenly we come into a World Cup, that our fan base and a lot of the rugby public are thinking we’re not the favourites.

“That’s created a bit of anxiety, hasn’t it? That anxiety comes out in different ways with media, with fans, with family, with players – and with us.

“But, I’m incredibly proud about the way that we’ve prepared over the last 12 months. I think there’s been a whole lot of dynamics out there, I think we’ve stayed true to who we are as a team, I think we’ve owned the pitfalls and things that went wrong, and we’re trying hard to work to fix them.

“We are in a good space right now, I think the team’s desperate, we’re desperate to perform, we want to go and beat Uruguay, we want to look forward and we feel like we’ve got the country behind us.

“I’m proud of the players, the way they’re reacting to that. It’s hurt them, they’re trying to respond well, they’re trying to behave the way All Blacks should do.

“Ultimately, we’ve just got to go out and perform and do that with the style that we want to do.”

With one win standing between the team and a quarter-final birth, New Zealand’s upcoming Test with Uruguay will be the final chance to build momentum before the knockout stages commence.

With the chance to put the drama behind him, Foster says he is loving the tournament.

“I think you’ve got to, I mean this is the World Cup for goodness sake, it’s fantastic, isn’t it?

“This is the big stage and it is where we want to be, and you can put aside anything that’s happened beforehand. We’re here, and for us, for this team, this is our time.”