Wales have to overcome a mental barrier to beat the southern hemisphere sides © Getty Images

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The autumn internationals always cause the first serious surge of excitement in the European rugby season and this year there is an extra frisson because no country can say they are experimenting or building for the future. The World Cup is less than 12 months away and for the home nations this is the litmus test.

Have they closed the gap or are we going to see another soul-destroying demonstration of southern hemisphere supremacy? Any country that gets wiped out in the next four weeks will be a bit part player - whatever spin they put on it they will go into the World Cup psychologically damaged and with no real hope of success.

All Blacks possess a powerful weapon - mystique

• Mystique. Hard to get, even harder to keep. Worth an extra man, worth a goal start or a bunch of points or whatever the currency in the game happens to be worth. Sometimes individuals possess mystique: Roger Federer in tennis, Usain Bolt in the sprints, Fu Mingxia in diving.
• But when it happens in teams, the phenomenon of mystique becomes truly remarkable. The All Blacks have arrived in the UK to take on a slew of Autumn internationals - starting on Saturday against England at Twickenham - and it is instructive to consider their mystique.
• With an individual you know that if you wait long enough, the mystique will run out. Ask Federer: these days he's just a brilliant tennis player. But once he not only bestrode but defined the game he played. Every opponent seemed to start a break-point down. Alas, the days when every one deferred to him are past.
• But with a team, mystique comes from continuity. The French football team had mystique of a kind when Zinedine Zidane was playing, but it went with the passing of Zizou. When a team has real mystique, it passes from one generation of players to the next. And that's the All Blacks for you.
• Read the full piece by Simon Barnes here

The general mood is very upbeat but some of the rhetoric and logic to back it up just does not bare scrutiny. I've read a couple of pieces that suggest the All Blacks have lost their aura as the men in black from a far off land who seemed almost superhuman when they donned the black jersey with the silver fern and started playing rugby. This, along with the haka (so the legend goes) made them virtually invincible. Not only is that a corny old chestnut that has been out of date for at least 40 years - the facts just do not bear it out.

I rarely resort to statistics but when it was recently (very pointedly) pointed out to me that Wales have only ever won once in the southern hemisphere against one of the big three other than at World Cups (I actually played in the game - it was against Australia in 1969) I decided to delve further.

Crunch the numbers and the figures show a picture far worse than I had ever imagined. The home countries have played New Zealand, South Africa and Australia 374 times in total and have won on only 77 occasions. When it comes to away matches the win/loss ratio is frightening - the home countries have won only 14 of 133 matches. Scotland, Ireland and Wales have never won in New Zealand or South Africa.

Back in the days when single country tours to the southern hemisphere were rare or non-existent there was some excuse. When they did happen the trips were short and the itineraries were crazy. In 1969 my first game for about six weeks was a Test against New Zealand, a week after arriving there having travelled cattle class from London - a journey that took 48 hours - but that is another story.

New Zealand and South Africa, in particular, played a more forward based game and we struggled to compete up front. On the first three occasions I played against the All Blacks for Wales I felt we were out of our depth and it was only when I went there with the 1971 Lions that I felt we had a chance - familiarity with their game allowed us to adapt and prepare accordingly.

Wales need to get some wins in the autumn Tests © Getty Images

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However, the record since the game has been professional is even worse than in the amateur days with just 34 wins from 207 matches - down from just over 20% to a little over 16%! England's record is far better than the other three but it is still pretty dismal.

That indicates there is some sort of inferiority complex or, quite simply, that southern hemisphere rugby is generally better. One thing is beyond argument - we, the home countries, seem to find it extraordinarily difficult to beat them and these days we play against them at least twice a year so there is no mystery element to contend with.

Even Australia, demonstrably the weakest of the big three, are used to beating New Zealand. Their record at home is a victory in every three games and it is better than 25% in New Zealand.

Compare that with Wales, the most successful home nation over the last decade. They have not beaten New Zealand since 1953. Under Warren Gatland they have won three Grand Slams but they have lost 24 out of 25 Tests against the Tri-Nations countries - with a solitary victory over South Africa in Cardiff in 1999.

They go into Saturday's game having lost to Australia on nine successive occasions. In the last four matches there has only been a total deficit of nine points but they lost every one of them. I have often felt that Gatland used the autumn internationals as warm-up matches for the Six Nations but he cannot afford that luxury this year. With Australia in the same pool in the World Cup it is absolutely crucial that somehow Wales break the sequence and get a victory - any sort of win will do - this weekend.

With Scotland deep in the doldrums, Ireland in a rebuilding phase (although they have some very talented players) and France in a very strange place it will be England and Wales leading the northern hemisphere challenge in 2015 but we desperately need victories from them this weekend if we are to start to believe the progress everybody assures us is happening is actually real. In this case statistics don't lie.

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