KEY POINTS:
I will not be paying good money to watch the All Blacks after Graham Henry's re-appointment as coach.
He doesn't deserve the appointment. He hasn't really said he's sorry properly and he's indicated rotation will remain. I think that is all wrong. He hasn't learned a lesson, even
though he says he has.
What last season showed is that anyone could have coached the All Blacks to that outcome. You, I or any club coach could have coached the All Blacks to lose in the World Cup quarter-final. You don't need great coaching credentials to achieve that.
Our players were lured into a situation where they were guided in everything they did; always told what to do - and by this group of coaches. Our players did not have the ability to think for themselves and to take matters in hand - as the English players did, as made clear by Mike Catt and Lawrence Dallaglio. The players took responsibility when they saw the coaching wasn't up to much. Our players just went numb.
And, frankly, that's where our coaching was too. Our coaches were sub-standard, just like the result they led us to.
So why would I pay to go and watch the All Blacks now? The prospect just doesn't excite me. Henry's made it clear he won't be sticking the best team on the field, as has Steve Tew. So we'll get more of last year, will we? We'll be playing rotated teams against France B, Canada and South Africa B.
The opposition weren't up to it but we still called them test matches and we went about the business of not preparing ourselves properly for the white-hot, knockout tournament that is the World Cup. We devalued the jersey, we selected and rotated players and any fool can see that the rugby public and stakeholders want to see the best team played, wherever possible and within reason.
People are sick of it. They are disillusioned. I stopped off at a ram sale yesterday and the cockies were swearing away, saying that if Henry was back, they wouldn't be.
But, oh no, we are going back to rotation; back to devalued jerseys and meaningless test matches.
I'm not saying that I will never go back and pay to watch an All Black test. Just this era of rotation, reconditioning and re-appointing to make the same mistakes. We'll only be watching the Tri Nations again - a competition where you can score two big wins, get bonus points and, with 10 points under your belt, you can win the tournament. Who's going to be interested in that? It's wrong.
We are not playing knockout tournaments and we don't seem to be heading in a direction to solve the issues of 2007. So why go?
What concerns me now is that we could lose Robbie Deans as well as Warren Gatland - two coaches who are coming to their peak while we have kept a 61-year-old who is a spent force and who embraced flawed policies. I hope Mike Eagle and Tew and others have done a deal to keep Deans here as he will be a huge loss, like Gats.
I know he can come back and coach but the reality is that he is out for the next four years - the NZRU seem to have made that clear.
And what for? So Henry and the board can save face. You wonder where New Zealand rugby will be if Deans or Gatland ever take over.
I just hope things are not further down the hill by then. Henry's is a short-term appointment with short-term thinking, taken not with the interests of the game at heart but the political interest of those involved.
There is now the prospect of the baton being passed to Steve Hansen after Henry's two years are up - and if that also comes about, the NZRU system has become totally about who is licking whose backside the hardest.
John Mitchell called it the corrupt politics of New Zealand rugby and he's right.
It is very sad.
