All Blacks Head Coach Steve Hansen poses following a media opportunity. Photo / Getty Images.
COMMENT:
There's always method to All Blacks coach Steve Hansen's misconstrued madness.
He's like a snooker player, having already thought out his next four moves while everyone else is focused on the shot at hand.
That much should, but probably won't become clear to everyone next week when the All Blacks face an increasingly confident and cohesive South Africa in Wellington.
Playing a test in New Zealand seven days after they have played one in Argentina, is an unprecedented challenge for the All Blacks.
Technically, given the time difference, they will be playing the Springboks six days after they played the Pumas in Buenos Aires, which is why a third of the squad didn't travel to Argentina.
Officially, that smaller group didn't travel because they are from the Crusaders and were deemed to be in need of a break after a long and demanding, championship-winning Super Rugby season.
That is largely true, but it's also to some extent a convenient cover story to mask that this exercise of splitting the squad into two playing groups has been done with the World Cup in mind.
It may backfire on this occasion, see the All Blacks lose either one or even two of their opening Rugby Championship tests, but as Hansen has said, they are prepared to lose now to prepare properly in their quest to retain the higher value of assets of the Bledisloe Cup and World Cup.
But the trick is to not get caught up worrying about the now if that does happen but to see how this strategy fits into a longer plan.
Having one side prepare for the next test while another prepares for the one after on the other side of the world is a significant coaching challenge.
It's a risk to have simultaneous game plans at work and there is a danger that a sense of division materialises among the players, but the World Cup also presents this very predicament.
And this is why Hansen is four moves ahead. This is the value of having a coach who is heading to his fifth World Cup and by having a core management group that will be working their 200th test together this weekend.
The All Blacks will play their opening game against the Springboks on September 21 and then their last three pool games against Canada, Namibia and Italy in a 10-day stretch that will require them to run with two separate teams.
They have four-day gaps between their last three tests and then a week before the quarter-final so they have to find a way to win tests, not overwork the players as potentially there are three back-to-back knock-out games lying in wait and yet also build some rhythm and confidence.
They are not alone in this now that World Rugby has taken a more equitable approach to scheduling and ensured that all teams and not just the minnows have to cram the games in.
Coping with these short turnarounds will have a critical bearing on who wins the World Cup.
The major test nations are ultra precious about the way they prepare and see seven days between games as the absolute minimum they should be asked to tolerate.
The Tier One test match cycle is based on seven day routines and then, come the biggest tournament of all, they have to play tests four days apart.
While it shouldn't be insurmountable to pull off the two team business, high performance environments are volatile, easily unsettled by the new and unfamiliar and what the All Blacks don't want is to be dumped out in the quarter-final and then have the inevitable review tell them they were mad to split their teams without previously having tried it.
Hansen experienced the difficulty of these short turnarounds at the 2015 World Cup, but it was about 12 months ago that he saw his opportunity to get his coaching team and players accustomed to splitting into two groups.
He persuaded New Zealand Rugby to let him first try the split team concept in November last year.
He was vilified for it in some sections of the press, with one English writer accusing the All Blacks of handing out confetti caps for the test against Japan in Tokyo.
That accusation was made after the team that played the Wallabies in Yokohama, flew to England without management to begin preparing for the clash at Twickenham two weeks later.
A team featuring six new caps and 22 changes played Japan, but on the basis the All Blacks won both tests, the plan worked.
Those who criticised Hansen were guilty of not understanding that the All Blacks were deliberating exposing themselves, or deliberately creating at least, the unusual circumstances they would encounter at the World Cup.
And these things end up mattering. World Cups are famous for seeing previously settled and performing teams imploding.
It doesn't take much to knock the equilibrium off – and often it can be the seemingly innocuous that can do the damage.
At the 2007 World Cup the All Blacks had a number of players who were leaving New Zealand after the tournament and a few of them got caught up in that – distracted by arrangements that had to be made, furniture that had to be shipped, houses that had to be rented and families relocated.
Minds weren't on the job the way they needed to be because in those relatively early years of professionalism, no one knew just how detailed teams needed to be with their planning to ensure peak performance.
The All Blacks didn't sweat the small stuff the way they now do. The minutia matters and is usually what separates the best teams.
At the 2015 World Cup Hansen again showed the art of being ahead of the pack in the way he loaded the All Blacks' training intensity during the last weeks of the pool rounds when they faced a run against moderate opposition.
It's a simplification of his thinking but essentially he could see that it was going to be vital in the knock-out rounds that the All Blacks be able to play fatigued.
He knew that with games against Namibia, Georgia and Tonga the pool rounds wouldn't stretch them enough and he didn't want the players' legs to go suddenly heavy in the last weeks of the tournament when the big games came thick and fast.
So when the All Blacks played like a tired team against Georgia and Tonga and took the subsequent flak for doing so, it was all, much like the test against Japan last year, part of a master plan that came good down the track.
By smashing themselves in training, they got used to playing fatigued in those earlier games which they knew they were going to win and come the knock-out rounds that was the norm for them and they flourished.
So who knows, the split team plan for these two coming tests may not yield the requisite two victories but it will, regardless, have stored vital intelligence into the network that will be invaluable in Japan.
And it is best to remember that those who are patient, prepared to trust Hansen and buy into the long-game he's playing, will have an altogether happier, less volatile experience following the All Blacks.
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