Defiant in face of a civil war

The job to die for can also be the job from hell - as John Mitchell is discovering. Tomorrow, he unleashes an All Blacks squad here who, despite injury woes, have rattled up 21 tries and conceded just one in two games, doing nothing to suggest they shouldn't still be seen as favourites to win the World Cup. Still, he gets slaughtered.

For the New Zealand coach, the equation was the same as ever; if the All Blacks didn't win, he'd lose his job. Or, as he put it: "I could be mowing lawns for a living next year." What they didn't warn him about was how he'd be expected to win it while extricating the knives from his back.

Imagine this. Michael Owen is dropped from England's European Championship squad by Sven-Goran Eriksson and then dismisses the coach as a "d***head" just as the competition is getting under way. That will give you an idea of how New Zealand has been consumed by an All Black hero's assault on a coach to whom a nation has never completely warmed.

A book about Christian Cullen, the All Blacks' most-prolific Test tryscorer, was released in New Zealand this week and in it Mitchell was painted as untrustworthy, selfish, weak, nervous and arrogant.

To many, these will be seen as the bitter rantings of an ageing, spurned champion but for a coach already under fire for everything from his team selection to his stonewalling of the media, it's like having another incendiary device planted beneath him as the All Blacks prepare to run into Tonga's missiles tomorrow.

If New Zealand do fail, Cullen may find himself pilloried as savagely as Mitchell. In the book, Cullen, who's also withering about Mitchell's assistant Robbie Deans, claims that when he'd told the team doctor that he'd be unavailable for tour selection two years ago because of injury, Mitchell announced he had been dropped.

"Then he made a comment about how, because he hadn't coached any of us (including Taine Randell and Jeff Wilson) before, he didn't owe us a phone call. Coming from an All Black coach, I thought he was a bit of a dick for saying that," said Cullen.

"That's like saying everything that has ever been achieved in that jersey before he came along counts for nothing. It's like saying the heritage, the tradition, the winning record is worthless . . . The result of all this was I didn't trust him. From day one."