KEY POINTS:
All Black assistant coach Steve Hansen has curiously revealed that the forwards were going to have to change "the habit of a lifetime" when it came to the lineout.
He didn't offer any insight into what that habit might be. Maybe he meant erratic concentration or poor execution.
Or perhaps he was referring to that remarkable ability to overcomplicate.
These are all faults the All Blacks have been unable to eradicate since Graham Henry took the job. In one of his first interviews in the post he was asked to give his thoughts on the All Black performance at the World Cup.
"We were flaky at set pieces, especially the lineouts," he said.
"Our general kicking is not strong and defence as a unit needs to be addressed."
Mike Cron came in and dramatically improved the scrums. Mick Byrne has made a discernable difference to the overall quality of the kicking and Henry himself has tightened the defence.
But the lineout has remained obdurate - immune to the various treatments that have been administered. In fact, it has probably got worse.
So bad in fact that midway through this year's Tri Nations the chasing pack started to believe the All Blacks were beatable.
As South Africa showed in Rustenburg, New Zealand's creative juices can be squeezed dry by continually forcing them to re-start the game from the touchline.
The decision-making becomes suspect under pressure and the execution gets clumsy. After a troubled night against the Springboks earlier this year in Wellington, Anton Oliver felt the players had suffered from paralysis by analysis. They were looking for specific cues in the South African lineout and when they couldn't pick them up failed to take any decisive action when defending the throw.
"We were aware they had a number of options and we studied them all week," said Oliver.
"But once we got out there, I think we were trying to compute too much information. We wanted to compete much more and [all that] we needed to do was just get someone up in the air."
There is no question that the All Blacks are even less comfortable on their own throw. A million theories have been espoused as to why that is. Hansen has spent the last few weeks watching videos of the best lineouts to see if he can narrow down where exactly the All Blacks have been going wrong.
The popular theory is that the All Blacks will now look to increase the tempo - cut out so much of the deception and try to get the ball back into play a lot quicker than they have been.
And that is probably the habit of a lifetime Hansen was alluding to last week. New Zealand teams across the board tend to be elaborate in the pre-throw phase. They practise a lot of deception and take their time getting set up. This is in contrast to the best lineouts - France, South Africa and Australia - who operate with minimum deception and like to keep the whole process snappy.
This year the All Blacks called in Robin Brooke to take a lineout session before the final Bledisloe Cup clash at Eden Park. The results were obvious, with the lineout functioning more smoothly and at a higher tempo. But the improvements were not sustained.
That suggested the problems were not just technical - there was an element of psychological turbulence, too. Under pressure the right decisions were not being made and the players reverted to their old habits of procrastination and overcomplication.
The throwing itself became suspect. Keven Mealamu, for all his enormous qualities, is still prone to going a bit wobbly.
That now is the challenge for Hansen - to streamline the whole process and get the lineout performing consistently. He needs to get the players to believe in their ability and trust that simple, well-executed ploys are more effective.
There have been occasions when the lineout has been in control - the first test against the Lions being the most memorable - but occasionally is not enough when you are trying to win a World Cup.
- HERALD ON SUNDAY
