Back in 2022, New Zealanders had a profound sense that the All Blackswere facing an unprecedentedly tough start to the year with three Tests against Ireland in July and then back-to-back Tests against the Springboks in South Africa.

It was by no means a difficult sales job getting the public to realise the danger that lay ahead. Ireland had beaten the All Blacks in late November 2021 and had won three of their last five encounters against New Zealand.

And the difficulty of playing the world champion Boks on their home patch hardly needed to be explained, so when the All Blacks came through those opening five games with just two wins, the nation was disappointed but not surprised.

That level of disappointment led to two assistant All Blacks coaches being sacked, head coach Ian Foster almost being sacked, and the year – New Zealand finished with nine wins, one draw and four defeats – widely deemed to be catastrophic.

What’s never been determined is whether the public, media and administrative backlash against Foster and his coaching team in 2022 was a cause or a symptom of the marketing hype that built up those opening five Tests.

Potentially, an answer to that question may come in 2025 as the All Blacks are facing an equally difficult, if not harder, season than the one they did three years ago, but not everyone seems to realise that just yet.

The All Blacks will kick off with a three-Test series against the French, which has been devalued in the minds of Kiwi fans after France head coach Fabien Galthié said in June last year that he will be leaving up to 20 of his best players at home.

New Zealanders heard that and jumped to the conclusion that the All Blacks would be facing a French team that they couldn’t possibly lose to.

How serious would the challenge be if the French were leaving that many players at home? As is often the way in New Zealand, the typical rugby fan pays little attention to what’s happening in the Six Nations, and the rugby fraternity does not appear to understand the strength in depth the French have built and continues to vastly underrate the quality of the squad that the All Blacks will be facing.

France have delivered one of the most compelling Six Nations campaigns in the last two decades – produced incredible power-based rugby that has come with a heavy twist of Gallic flair – and Kiwis have barely noticed.

Few rugby followers in New Zealandappreciated the brilliance of the French, who played a brand of rugby the All Blacks aspire to but haven’t found the quality of personnel or depth of understanding to master.

And Kiwis have missed entirely the fact that France have beaten the All Blacks on the last three occasions the two sides have met, and that the former has used 38 players in the process.

France could leave 40 players at home in July and still be a serious contender, but Galthié’s strategic mention that he intends to sabotage his own selections has sown a powerful message into the narrative that this is a series the All Blacks are 100 per cent expected to win.

And because the Kiwi public and media now have a seemingly fixed view about this series being a virtual gimme, the All Blacks not only need to win it, but they need to hammer the French three times if they are to live up to expectation.

All Blacks coach Scott Robertson won’t be so silly as to underestimate the French, but he won’t love that public expectation has been shaped the way it has.

The country turned septic on Foster for losing a series to what was arguably the best Irish side in history and one that may not have been ranked number one in the world when they arrived, but were by the time they left.

Imagine how feral the nation will be if Robertson’s All Blacks lose to what is supposedly going to be a French ‘B’ team?

It’s almost like Robertson can’t win now, because even if the All Blacks sweep the series, it will be merely delivering what everyone saw as a minimum requirement.

And he won’t have much faith either that the narrative will be reshaped in the wake of France winning the Six Nations, despite the fact a few New Zealand pundits are catching on to just how good Les Bleus actually are.

Former All Black Stephen Donald, speaking on Sky’s The Breakdown, said: “We don’t know who’s coming down [on tour], but it was one of the most impressive French performances since there was all the hype around them.

“They absolutely dismantled Ireland. You talk about players who we might not know of – well I still couldn’t tell you the names of them – but the forwards coming off the bench just kept rolling through Ireland. They dismantled Ireland physically.

“We know how organised and structured Ireland are and how slick they are with ball in hand – well France took them out of it. They took them out of it physically and then Ireland didn’t have too many places to go to.”

All the pressure now sits on the All Blacks, and France, having already been written off, are effectively coming to New Zealand to have a free hit at making history.

Starting the 2025 season against a dangerous French team will be as hard as the three-Test series the 2022 All Blacks endured against Ireland.

But where the danger factor seems higher still for the 2025 All Blacks is that they must then head to Argentina for two Tests – a tricky but winnable assignment – before returning to New Zealand and taking on the Springboks in successive weekends.

The All Blacks of 2022 lost three of their first five tests, and four of their first seven and such a scenario repeating in 2025 is not inconceivable, because the Boks are clearly going to come highly motivated to end New Zealand’s 31-year unbeaten run at Eden Park.

None of this is an attempt to predict the future, or to write off the All Blacks as a failing franchise, but to merely highlight the difficulty of what lies ahead and the lack of wider acknowledgement about how tough 2025 is going to be.

The real kicker, perhaps, in all this is that the Wallabies are also likely to present a much stiffer challenge come late September and early October when the Bledisloe Cup is played, and with Tests to follow against Ireland, Scotland and England, the only absolute sitter for the All Blacks will be their last match in Cardiff.

It is of course entirely possible that the All Blacks will sweep through the year in majestic fashion and win the lot, but what seems more likely is that by the end of this year, the events of 2022 may have to be reconsidered and regraded as less catastrophic.

The old days of the All Blacks winning 90 per cent of their Tests over a World Cup cycle and going through an entire calendar year unbeaten, as they did in 2013, are long gone.

The new reality for the All Blacks, given the improved relative strength of the top eight nations, is that a 70 per cent win ratio is a solid return.

Even last year there was evidence to cast 2022 in a different light. The All Blacks lost four Tests in 2024 – the same number they did in 2022 – and yet there was an element of Robertson being given some leeway given it was his first year at the helm.

But if the results have a similar hue in 2025, the country will need to decide whether to start agitating for changes in the same way it did in 2022, or be prepared to reconsider what an acceptable win ratio benchmark is for the All Blacks in the current era.