In the first of a series talking to players and coaches who have won the Rugby World Cup, Mick Cleary talks to John Kirwan about the All Blacks’ triumph in 1987 It all seems so natural now, the four-year build to a Rugby World Cup, the plans, the strategies, the selection conundrums, the rise, the fall, the prospects. Every country buys into that cycle, works their way towards the goal, striving for the summit. So much energy, so much revenue with 80 per cent of the game’s funding derived from the profits generated by the tournament. It is big business. As the tournament in Japan nears, it is remarkable to think that there were so many sceptics prior to the first World Cup in 1987. Many in the more hidebound northern hemisphere believed that it would be the thin end of the wedge and would herald professionalism. It did, eight years later. But the demand was there. The latent interest was there. And the game needed it, particularly down in New Zealand which had been riven by controversy across the early years of the decade. Rugby might be a dominating influence in the affairs of that country but that does…