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| Steve Hansen with All Blacks' squad - Lynn McConnell pic |
In a wide-ranging two-part interview with walesonline.co.uk Hansen, who was one of the few high-profile people in the game to push for a global season, said the pandemic represented a great chance for all affected parties across the world to come together and do what was right for the game.
"It's been a long time coming because it's been needed for quite some time.
"There has been a lot of self-interest and if we don't do the right thing we could lose the game and that would be a tragedy.
"We have lost our way in rugby a little bit and we haven't been working well enough together.
"Maybe this pandemic has caused a crisis that means we have to. If that's the case, then that's one positive to come out some something that's pretty ordinary," he said.
No one has been at the sharp end of the modern game as long as Hansen. While others have come or gone, moved on to other contracts or given the game away, Hansen spent 20 years at the highest level pouring his energy into five World Cup campaigns, one with Wales and four with New Zealand, coming away with two gold medals and one bronze.
That puts him in a place to offer a rare perspective of life at the top.
No surprise surrounds the fact the 2007 World Cup quarterfinal exit had such an effect on his career.
"I think that was a turning point in New Zealand's World Cup history.
"The New Zealand Rugby Union were strong enough, smart enough, whatever you want to call it, to say we were going to come back in and do it again.
"It was the first time in All Black history a group of coaches had been given the opportunity to take the lessons they had learned from World Cup poor performances and put them into the next one," he said.
Winning in 2011 had been achieved 'by the skin of our teeth under some tough mental issues', the result of not having won the trophy in 24 years.
Apart from losing four first five-eighths they also had captain Richie McCaw with two broken bones in his foot.
"We didn't know they were broken because we didn't ask. We didn't want to know and he didn't want to say.
"What he did in that tournament was phenomenal. Mentally, he would be the toughest bloke I have had anything to do within my coaching career.
"I think he's the best rugby player the world has ever seen," he said.
But the World Cup provided its lessons and with New Zealand having learned more than any other team, it was a case of having to get things right or you lost the opportunity.
"In the one just gone, [2019] we played really good rugby, bar for one game, and unfortunately that one game says, 'right, you don't get a second chance'.
"And England, who played so tremendously well against us, couldn't back it up in the final," he said.
Hansen also admitted to not coaching as well as he might have in the 2017 series against the British & Irish Lions.
"I was pretty disappointed in myself and some of the coaching decisions I made," he said.
At the same time, he felt the series could have been significantly different.
The way the second Test was lost, after Sonny Bill Williams' red card, and with the All Blacks leading into the final moments he was frustrated at the end.
"To lose it on a penalty where a guy tackles a guy jumping to catch the ball from a poor pass when everyone knows that wasn't intentional of that rule, that's frustrating.
"Then the last game was frustrating with the decision at the end [with Ken Owens] that was so obvious to everybody, but no one wanted to admit it," he said.
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