LONG READ Sir Graham Henry is the All Blacks' new kingmaker - and lords of the scrum high on his agenda

It is 17 years since Sir Graham Henry retreated to the peace and quiet of Waiheke Island. The jewel of the Hauraki Gulf is only a 35-minute ferry trip away from the buzzing hub of downtown Auckland, but it is worlds away from the cares and worries of everyday life. “You know when you see the sign as you get off the ferry: Slow Down, You’re Here. You can feel your heart-rate drop by 10 beats per minute.”

Those words are not some advertising shtick, they are the words of the man himself. So why would a 79-year-old volunteer to leave paradise, rip off the heart rate monitor and run towards the white-hot media glare of the All Blacks, the epicentre of the volcano?

The answer is disarmingly simple: you can take the man out of coaching, but you can never take the coach out of the man. That could be the byline for Henry’s return to the fold as a national selector. Split him open and you will find an all-black heart with a silver lining. After coaching 140 games for the national team, the call is too strong to resist and age does not matter. Ride or die.

He only appeared to be joking when he told Scotty Stevenson and Israel Dagg on Sport Nation “to be frank, it’s just bloody good to wake up in the mornings these days, so to also have that responsibility – [it] might keep you alive for a few more years.” Deep down, he was being deadly serious.

Anyone who fondly believes Henry is coming along as a passenger is sorely mistaken. He will be driving change from the back seat, either making kings or breaking them. It came as no surprise when newly-anointed head coach Dave Rennie revealed last week he had already begun the plotting and planning with his illustrious predecessor, with more than 60 New Zealand-qualified players under an ongoing analytical microscope.

“I’ve had a number of chats with him even prior to applying for the job, just to get ‘our’ head around the legacy, and all the work he did around leadership; what he found, what he learned in his time as the All Blacks coach.

“He talked about the impact [ex New Zealand number eight] Sir Brian Lochore had when he was coaching the All Blacks as a selector.

“He [still] watches a lot of rugby, he’s got pretty strong opinions on players. The conversations we’ve had have been brilliant. He’s an avid watcher of the game and that’s important for us.

“We’re hoping that with his eye, he may see something a little bit different to us, which will help get the right people in the squad.”

Make no mistake, Henry will leave his mark on Rennie’s new All Blacks. He has more international experience than Rennie and his assistants – Neil Barnes, Jase Ryan, Mike Blair and Tana Umaga – put together. He will be seeing that “something a little bit different”, and he will not be backward in pushing forward innovative solutions in selection.

This is the man who first selected twin number sevens in the back-row, with Richie McCaw and Rodney So’oialo at numbers seven and eight; and two others sitting just behind them in Chris Masoe and Marty Holah. Twin opensides remains a burgeoning trend in the modern game, with England often picking two or even three on the recent 12-match unbeaten run under Steve Borthwick.

Henry is also the man who forsook a lifetime of loyalty to the notion of auxiliary 10s playing second five-eighth after the 2007 World Cup, and foresaw the evolution of a part-time centre-cum-wing in the spot for the next 13 years. Out went Aaron Mauger and Luke McAlister and in came Ma’a Nonu, the best number 12 ever to have played the position in the professional era.

Above all, Henry understood the need for props focused far more on their core roles when he first took over the national reins in 2004. Under the watchful eye of scrum guru Phil Keith-Roach, England entered the 2003 World Cup with their scrum generating as much as 2000kg of aggregate pushing force, compared to 1200kg by the All Blacks at the time.

When the acid test duly arrived on 14^th June 2003, six Englishmen famously survived against eight All Blacks in a goal-line stand in the wind and rain of the Cake Tin. They did more than survive, they forced the New Zealand front row to give ground and stand up.

Over the following years, Henry repaired the damage to the national set-piece with the help of legendary biomechanical expert Mike Cron, and at the heart of the improvement were props Tony Woodcock, Carl Hayman and Owen Franks. Hayman was the one overseas player Henry would later regret being unable to select for the home World Cup in 2011. The 6ft 5ins, 120kg giant had reached a career performance peak with three-time European Champions Cup winners Toulon, and when Henry met him on the Cote d’Azur he told me he had never seen him looking fitter or better-honed for rugby.

Now imagine Hayman and ‘Owie’ in their prime, preparing for ‘The Greatest Rivalry’ tour of South Africa in only 10 weeks. It may be nothing more than a wistful ‘what if?’ but it underlines the greatest concern for Rennie and Henry in the build-up to the tour of the Republic. Henry will be transported back to the future, to the same start line in the front row as in 2004. As Rennie observed recently: “Look, we’re a couple of injuries away from being exposed in certain spots. We’ve got a handful of props injured at the moment.

“We’re constantly looking, from a selection point of view, at a group of 34 that we’ll initially name. If we can name that group, we’d be very strong in all spots. Injury would be the only concern.”

Hurricane Tyrel Lomax was probably the word’s best tighthead prop in 2024, but he has been hobbled by two injuries in the course of the current Super Rugby Pacific season; a broken thumb suffered in round five, and an ankle ligament injury requiring surgery which has kept him out of the selection picture ever since.

Another likely Test series incumbent, 140kg Crusader man mountain Tamaiti Williams, only played two games at the beginning of the season before his campaign was ended by a spinal infection.

“I think Tyrel will be back soon,” Rennie said. “Tamaiti? We’re still unclear about whether he’d be available and whether we’d have a chance to take him to Africa.”

Reading between the lines, Henry already understands the selection tightrope he will have to tread in the front row, the narrow margin between the need for athleticism in the tight five and the need to perform the core set-piece roles with accuracy and aggression.

“I guess the athleticism to be able to do a role outside of the set piece is becoming more important [for the tight five] than it used to be,” he said.

“But the front row is vital in today’s game. If you get done at the scrum, it’s hard to win. So, you’ve got to have six players who can do the job and scrum. So that’s three subs. Look at South Africa, what they’ve done there in that area of the game with the bomb squad.”

The first thought in the minds of Henry and Rennie will be, ‘how do we neutralise the dual threat of Thomas du Toit and Wilco Louw at tighthead prop?’ If they cannot arrive at a satisfactory answer to that question, they can forget about winning the series.

The All Blacks coaching hierarchy urgently needs to find a solution to Louw, entering the fray anywhere between the 40^th minute and the hour mark off the pine. Scrummaging became especially difficult for the All Blacks when the 144kg Bull came on to the field.

Who represents the best match-up against the monster from the Western Cape? If Williams is not fit to tour, do Rennie and Henry shift Ethan de Groot to the bench to counter the bomb squad, and start with one of Ofa Tu’ungafasi, Ollie Norris or Xavier Numia to meet the athletic needs at the start of the game? Or do they keep De Groot where he is, and hope for the best from one of the other three in the last half hour?

The two biggest scrums of the double-header between the Springboks and All Blacks in last year’s Rugby Championship featured Louw versus Williams on the left side of the New Zealand set-piece.

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— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) May 16, 2026

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— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) May 16, 2026

At both scrums Williams finishes running backwards once Louw lifts him out of his initial position, and both set-pieces end with a try by the Springboks. Louw stands just over 6ft tall, so scrum endurance is a potential problem for at least three of the Kiwi ‘Greatest Rivalry’ candidates to face him: all of Tu’ungafasi, Williams and Norris are 6ft 4ins or 6ft 5ins. Height becomes more of an issue the longer a scrum lasts, and the deeper into a set-piece you go.

Flip the coin over, and Williams twice demonstrated he could cope, and more, if he could achieve the right body-shape immediately at ‘set’.

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— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) May 16, 2026

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— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) May 16, 2026

In both of these examples, Williams gets a positive nudge at the hit and he is able to prevent Louw from ‘sinking’ and keep the scrum high.

Henry will be 80 years old next month, but age has not quenched his desire to educate, and spread the rugby gospel. He will be an invaluable asset to Rennie’s callow coaching group as a selector and a mentor, and he will never be anything less than forthright in his opinions.

If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen: the kingmaker is back, and he will start by looking for a few lords in the front-row to match the beastly Boks. ‘The Greatest Rivalry’ will not just be Springboks versus All Blacks, it will be a joust between the two greatest head-coaching minds of the professional era.