'S14 failure a blessing in disguise'
All Blacks coach Graham Henry, the architect of the vilified New Zealand conditioning programme that saw 22 top All Blacks withdrawn from half of the Super 14, has stated that New Zealand failure to see a team in the finals is “probably a good thing”.
“It keeps people’s feet on the ground and stops any complacency, so it’s probably a good thing for the All Blacks,” he told New Zealand’s National Radio.
Henry did agree however that the dominance of South African teams did demonstrate the renewed threat that South Africa will pose to the New Zealand World Cup dream.
“They have improved considerably, Super 14 teams are the measuring stick on the international sides and we expected that,” Henry said.
“We have been saying that for some time now.
“It is a reality check for New Zealand rugby people that these things are never automatic, the World Cup is never automatic, we haven’t won it for a long time, 20 years.”
Despite consistently being one of the hardest teams to beat in world rugby, New Zealand has not won a World Cup since they bagged the victory at the inaugaral tournament in 1987.
The conditioning programme probably demonstrates the immense hunger of the nation for World Cup success. Anything less than victory will see the end of Graham Henry’s reign.
Henry also assures that he will be fielding his strongest side throughout the Tests leading up to the World Cup, including the Tri-Nation.
“For sure, everyone will be putting out their strongest teams, it’s a shakedown for the Rugby World Cup.
“[The Tri-Nations] will be major Test matches, they are major Test matches every year, so things haven’t changed, really.”
Henry also responded to criticism that perhaps the conditioning had not had the desired effect, with many of the top All Blacks injuring themselves upon return, or just showing a general lack of form and sharpness.
“I don’t know that there’s been a lot of comments, there’s been comments occasionally about those sort of things but the conditioning window’s there for the World Cup,” Henry said.
“We are hoping guys will peak in August-September. They are not expected to peak in May so that was the reason for the conditioning window – so that these guys haven’t played 30-odd games during the calendar year and if they had done that, they would have fallen over.
“So hopefully, they will peak at the right time of the year, which is obviously September-October.”
Henry said World Cup preparations were on track but ” if we don’t keep on improving, other teams will pass us and that’s what they are trying to do.
“One of the examples are South Africa but there are others, the French, Irish, Australians and so on.
“You can never rest on your laurels, and so our objective is to keep on improving and we hope to do that through the Test matches and Tri-Nations and on to the World Cup.
“We need to improve 20-25 per cent if we are going to be World Cup champions at the end of the year so there’s a lot of work to be done but at the moment we can’t do any more than we are doing.”
Henry also asserted that much of the critcism was due to ” a problem with New Zealand fans… they don’t think anybody else can play [but] of course they can. That’s why we haven’t won [the World Cup] for 20 years.”
