Ben Franks - What the All Blacks’ winning culture can teach us

Ben Franks is one of the toughest and most respected front row players in world rugby and one of the very few who can claim to be a two-time World Cup winner with the New Zealand All Blacks. Ben and his brother Owen formed one of the most powerful front rows in international rugby and became symbols of toughness and consistency in the All Blacks forward pack. He was admired for his strength, discipline and relentless attitude to improve. How was 2011? What did that look like and how did that feel to win, right, the World Cup and especially that 20-year gap?

Yeah, well, if I just go back a little bit on that, when I first made the All Blacks, it

really

is a dream come true. It's everything you want to be. And I remember my first tour to Europe. would go to europe and it didn't really matter how well we played what the score was the headline would always be the all blacks are chokers and as we talked about the heritage of the all blacks and you felt like i've finally got the opportunity to be on this team and then everyone's talking about us being chokers so i do think that sort of lit a bit of a fire under that group um But I think what really helped set up getting to 2011 was that there were so many good players. There was so much competition. Just getting to the World Cup was an achievement in itself. Because I just remember, I never really even looked... Obviously, I wanted to go to the World Cup, but I never felt like I could look past the next day's training because there was three or four of us fighting for the same position. Graham Henry saying, oh, you know, you're going to get a phone call if you're in the Rugby World Cup squad, you had to have made it. And, man, talking about pressure, that was tough. And there's a number of guys who... I didn't know how the coaches separated between there's so much so much quality in there so I think just just the competition to get there to be in the team to then go to the world cup was massive I think uh I don't know if people just get a bit of a romance around when they talk about culture something gets talked around a lot

yeah

And maybe when they have an impression of what the All Blacks culture was, I think they think, oh, everything was in harmony. It must be a great place to be. Sounds bloody hard to me. They were some intense days.

Yeah.

Like our meetings were intense. There was an intensity to the week. Some people, if they come into their environment, they might look at it as toxic just through the amount of pressure that's in them. You know, when you're winning 90% of your games plus, you do really need to dig deep. How do we stay ahead of the other teams? because I think it isn't human nature to become uncomfortable. Totally. So we're all fighting it. It's not like I was born or all the other guys were born not wanting to. Yeah, of course you just want to relax. I'll just take a day. I don't need to push as hard today. I'll just save myself. But that's just the start of the rot, isn't it? And you all have those natural feelings. But again, when you surround yourself with the right people and you have competition and you push each other, well, the days that I'm feeling like that, well, okay, my