All Blacks fans more pessimistic than arrogant

Graham Henry has put backs up calling All Blacks fans 'arrogant'. Picture / Fotopress

Graham Henry's much-publicised "arrogant" description of All Black supporters might have been wide of the mark - even before the All Black coach explained himself a little more fully.

According to a national survey conducted before Henry's comments were made, 31 per cent of All Black fans are expecting the All Blacks to lose their away Tri Nations test match against the Wallabies in Sydney on August 13. A further 15 per cent believe they will lose next Sunday morning's opening Tri Nations clash against the Springboks.

In addition, only 57 per cent think the All Blacks will do the "Tri Slam" this year - winning all four home and away games in the Tri Nations. This has been achieved four times in the last nine years, with the All Blacks doing it three times and the South Africans once.

Also, only 54 per cent felt the All Blacks would win all test matches in 2005, with 46 per cent expecting at least one test loss and 14 per cent two test losses or more.

"I don't think that is a profile of an arrogant or blindly demanding fan base," said Simon Arkwright of sports research company Market Intelligence, who managed the survey. He said that fans showed their knowledge of the Tri Nations competition with 98 per cent expecting the All Blacks to win their home games against Australia and South Africa.

However, perhaps as a result of the Lions tour, fans' expectations of the upcoming Grand Slam tour at the end of the year were higher - with 89 per cent expecting them to do the Slam, although eight per cent are predicting a loss against Wales.

To be fair to Henry, he later qualified his original comments: "Generally speaking, New Zealanders are pretty arrogant about their feelings about the All Blacks and think they're the best team in the world. That's not the case, especially since the game has gone professional."

He later said that the media needed to play a bigger role in helping fans understand that the All Blacks might suffer a loss or two as they developed depth across the board in the build-up to the 2007 World Cup.

Henry stressed there was nothing wrong with wanting the All Blacks to win every match but, when they didn't, there must be more understanding that a loss does not necessarily mean the All Blacks were bad but possibly that the opposition were better.

"In doing that [developing players] we leave ourselves a little bit vulnerable but I'd like the media to acknowledge that so the public can mature."

Arkwright said the findings of the survey were also roughly in line with another done after the All Blacks' November 2004 tour of Europe which polled many of the same respondents.

Those results also showed that the Henry development message was getting through with 81 per cent saying he was on the right track with the All Blacks, 16 per cent undecided and only three per cent saying he was wrong.

Including development players on tour also got a big tick, with 77 per cent saying it was the right thing to do, with 16 per cent undecided and seven per cent against it.

The only survey finding which supports Henry's contention that the public needed more understanding was the fact that, in last year's survey, only 51 per cent felt it was acceptable to include development players - as opposed to the best possible team - at test level.

The resting of Tana Umaga in last year's test against Wales was one of the biggest negatives recorded, along with the feeling that Henry took too many players on tour with 32 for four games.