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Anyone who knows a Kiwi knows they hate losing to Australia.

At anything.

So imagine how they will feel if the Wallabies win the 2011 Rugby World Cup on New Zealand soil - with a Kiwi coach.

A former All Black no less.

Just imagine it: the very man most New Zealanders wanted as All Blacks coach - and indeed who seemed certain to be the next All Blacks coach just a fortnight ago - coaching the All Blacks' greatest rivals.

This is the deeply distressing, once-unthinkable scenario facing New Zealand sports fans after Friday's confirmation that 48-year-old Robbie Deans has been appointed - amid much ado - to succeed John Connolly as Wallabies coach.

In a watershed moment for Australian sport, the ARU has snaffled Deans for four years, giving the Wallabies their first foreign coach in more than a century of Test-match rugby.

One hundred and eight years, in fact, since Australia's first Test in 1899 against England.

And we thought Richie McCaw could pilfer.

This is one of the great steals, one that has left rugby fanatics across New Zealand appalled, bitter and ... well, more than a wee bit worried.

While Deans might not be every Australian's first choice to coach the national team, including the patriotic Connolly and World Cup-winning captain Nick Farr Jones, ARU chief John O'Neill must be positively laughing.

Probably not all the way to the bank given the speculated $1 million a season the ARU is forking out of its leaking coffers, but laughing nevertheless.

We've stolen Phar Lap, we've claimed Russell Crowe, adopted Split Enz and pummelled New Zealand in just about every other sport that matters.

Now we've nabbed the very man who most Kiwis would dearly love to have been entrusted with the only portfolio in New Zealand more important than the Prime Ministership.

In deciding to retain the much-maligned Graham Henry, despite the All Blacks' latest World Cup failure, the NZRU virtually served up Deans to Australia on a platter.

What will they give us next? The Bledisloe Cup, the Tri Nations Trophy, the World Cup ... oops, that's right, they haven't got that have they?

Haven't had it for 20 years.

And if Robbie Deans has his way, they won't have it for at least another eight.