Chris Rattue: Pull the trigger and let's get shot of Henry

Graham Henry's coaching magic is fading fast. Photo / Getty Images

All Black coach Graham Henry and his cohorts should be sacked. Enough is enough.

It's time for the clean out, the night of the long knives, the great purge. You would have to ask serious questions over the quality of the NZRU executive and board as well, given their dalliances with the national provincial competition and staggering decision to reappoint Henry after the last World Cup.

The Kremlin is full of arrogance and rot, and it's well past the time when this decaying monolith is forced to start all over again. The national game needs leaders with clear thought, charisma and a positive outlook not based on excuse-making for their failures.

The All Black coaching and selection panel is the immediate problem to sort out.

What we are now seeing is typical of Henry's international coaching history. He starts with a roar but fails to land the big prizes and fades fast. It happened with Wales, the Lions and his first four years of his All Black reign.

His career has included major achievements, for sure, but also clear failures and he is on the slide now.

Surely even Henry's staunch supporters, and he's got plenty of them in influential places, can see that whatever coaching magic he once possessed is fading fast.

The blood that should have been spilled after the appalling World Cup campaign of 2007 needs to flow right now.

The truth will always out, and it has flooded all over our television screens during the past fortnight. The All Blacks have sunk to depths never thought imaginable, to the point that they can't even use a horrible loss to stir themselves towards redemption.

You can only cringe as these rugby warriors lurch into the pre-match haka. Oooh, we're all so scared. Actually, we're all trying to work out who is in the team this week.

Bloemfontein was the portent, Durban the nadir. The memories from South Africa will centre on Neemia Tialata's lumbering 20m drop out and Piri Weepu hurling the ball back to no one near his goal line. That's if you can get past the image of Joe Rokocoko trying to run the ball into the field of play, as if he'd woken up and found himself in an NRL game.

More saddening still was the sight of the stupendous All Black warhorse Richie McCaw battling to find form. McCaw has had to prop up this team for too long. It's all got too much, even for him. At this rate, with McCaw scurrying all over the park trying to find the All Blacks' game, he'll be a wreck by the World Cup.