The New Zealand press reacted with predictable fury to the All Blacks' elimination from the Rugby World Cup on Saturday night. On a black front page under the headline "So much promise, only tears to show for it", the New Zealand Herald said: "Today we lament how the team sporting year that promised so much has delivered so little - first the cricket world cup, then the America's Cup, and now rugby's top prize fallen by the wayside, leaving only next month's netball world championship to pin our hopes on.

"... So when New Zealand hosts the 2011 Rugby World Cup - not as reigning champions as we'd hoped - we will focus on putting behind the haunting knowledge it's really been not four more years, but 24 between drinks."

The main headline on the Herald's front page read "Deja vu all over again . . . and again . . . and again". Underneath, it continued: "The most expensive, and most intensive, preparation, and now the worst performance by the All Blacks in any Rugby World Cup - out in the quarter-finals

"How did it come to this?

"A (NZ dollars) 50 million campaign, 30 cosseted players, three top coaches, a supporting cast of 24, all headed to France to bring home rugby's ultimate prize.

"Despite the rugby union's single-minded pursuit of the cup, including its unprecedented interruption of the Super 12 and the national competition and controversy over player rotations, the All Blacks left with a nation, for once, remarkably united in its confidence that this year was our best chance of bringing home the William Webb Ellis trophy.

"A month later the team are about to limp home, leaving hordes of gutted New Zealand fans in Europe bearing once-prized final tickets to the Stade de France. Across New Zealand all flags limply flutter and the mood is a sadly familiar here we go again."

The Christchurch-based Press was equally scathing. Its main front-page headline was "What a black night, Richie".

Also on their front page and under the heading "A national disgrace and many heads should roll", columnist David Moffett, a former boss of the New Zealand, NSW and Welsh rugby unions stated: "A national disgrace, incompetent and the ultimate French farce.

"These are just a few phrases that leap to mind following the exit of the All Blacks in the quarter-finals of a world cup we were supposed to dominate.

". . . The union poured obscene sums of money into this campaign and asked us all to trust them because they knew what they were doing. We now know what they did with that trust and it's time to pay the piper.

"By the time you read this I hope that Henry will have done the honourable thing and resigned. There is no future in the All Blacks for a coach that put all his eggs in the world cup basket and delivered the worst result in history."