Breaking our culture of croneyism - Expensive early lessons for Taoiseach

Because of the week that’s in it, it seems a justifiable exercise to consider how those great managers of image, expectation, and their supporters — New Zealand’s All Blacks — have come to be all-conquering and all but unassailable, to see if their culture, their way of realising their ambitions offer any lessons for our new Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.

The All Blacks have a huge work ethic; they built a culture of honest self-appraisal and act on negative conclusions.

They have learned how their unshakeable sense of community can be harnessed and, as an aside of course, used to cow opponents even before a ball is kicked.