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Graham Henry's return to the All Blacks brings confidence
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The idea of having Graham Henry as an All Blacks selector is inspired.
You need someone who can see the wood from the trees.
Someone removed from actually coaching players and knowing them intimately as people. Someone with ideas and insights from beyond the bubble.
In appointment after appointment, New Zealand Rugby and All Blacks head coach Dave Rennie are doing things that make sense and engender confidence.
Henry, at 79, isn’t a young man. Towards the end of his own tenure as All Blacks coach in 2011, there was a feeling that he was running on fumes. It’s an all-consuming job and, lest we forest, the entire nation was becoming increasingly desperate to win another Rugby World Cup.
Not least because of the hash Henry and company made of the 2007 campaign.
Now news has broken that Henry is back which, at face value, sounds absolutely tremendous.
I mention the face value part, because we had a not entirely dissimilar situation with Grant Fox selecting teams during Steve Hansen’s tenure as head coach.
Again, good idea. Sound man, lots of experience and knowledge and not a person who’s going to be tasked with coaching the team.
Only Fox was around the team. He floated around with the coaching staff and management at games, he could be seen in a tracksuit and boots at training.
Not all the time, but often enough.
If I were Rennie, I’d want Henry removed from that. At arm’s length, fully connected with Rennie and the staff, but not part of the entourage.
It’s easy to be swept up by the All Blacks. To revel in the travelling roadshow and to form relationships that potentially compromise your decision making.
Even from a media point of view, when you’re around the team week after week, you start to pick favourites. You want success or selection for the good blokes and become swayed by the person rather than the player.
I don’t think you can have that in the role in which Henry is being cast.
You need someone with skin in the game, but not someone who’s part of the team.
Any coach needs an impartial observer. A sounding board, someone to be honest with them about how they’re going and what’s working and what’s not.
In Henry, Rennie couldn’t hope for a better one, provided there’s some distance from the day-to-day environment.
There’s no doubt Henry is astute. Ruthless too. He also knows the job Rennie’s about to start as well as anyone and the pressures that accompany it.
He also comes, like Rennie and lead assistant coach Neil Barnes, from the traditional New Zealand coaching pathway.
Henry coached school boys and club players. He cut his high-performance teeth in provincial rugby, he took charge of Wales before he ascended to the All Blacks.
It’s important to make your mistakes and hone your methods long before you reach our national side. The All Blacks are not the place for apprentices.
Let’s not forget too, that it was Henry who made new All Blacks defence coach Tana Umaga captain of the team. Some fans might not have been ready for a dreadlocked Samoan as All Blacks captain, but Henry knew the team was.
Every team has a natural leader. A player that others gravitate to or look up to. That person isn’t always the designated captain.
To me, the leader of the Sam Cane-captained All Blacks was Sam Whitelock. Just as Ardie Savea has been while Scott Barrett was nominally in charge.
Henry’s input – assuming it’s asked for – on who’ll captain Rennie’s team will be invaluable.
I’ve found the All Blacks hard to warm to since Hansen’s day. I felt the calibre of people involved and the decisions being made were questionable.
This news about Henry’s appointment continues a pleasing pattern of quality people and proven performers populating pivotal off-field roles.
It augurs well for what the All Blacks might produce where it matters most.
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