KEY POINTS:
As a promotional tool for next year's Bledisloe Cup tests, try and think of a better angle than Graham Henry v Robbie Deans. All Blacks v Wallabies. The victor v the unwanted.
Deans' confirmation as successor to John Connolly yesterday simply confirmed rugby's worst kept secret, and it
lit the fuse for a series of dramatic confrontations next winter from which all sorts of conclusions will, rightly or wrongly, be drawn.
The moment Deans was overlooked by the New Zealand Rugby Union for the All Blacks job, you could have put your shirt on Australian Rugby Union chief executive John O'Neill and his chums stepping forward.
As soon as they announced Deans' late addition to the list of contenders for the Wallaby job it was as good as signed and sealed. Otherwise, why bother to reopen the process, and especially for someone who does not hold an Australian passport?
Deans has an unparalleled record of Super rugby success. He is an outstanding coach, for whom the big part of signing on for the Wallabies will be the challenge. The money, and it'll be a bucketload, is all very well. But Deans will relish a fresh, substantial test of his abilities.
He would not have touched the Australian job for the money alone. It will be the chance to pick up the remnants of a Wallaby team after a dismal World Cup and turn it around.
If he did not think it was possible, he would have passed. There are exceptions, but most leading coaches do not have financial gain as the prime motivation. They are stirred by the possibilities of the position.
That the NZRU chose to allow Deans to see out the final year of his contract as Crusaders coach will raise eyebrows. Even those with a charitable view of Deans' decision to head overseas, will wonder at the wisdom of having an Australian fox in the New Zealand henhouse.
Maybe the NZRU, already under the hammer for not choosing Deans - with the full backing of the union - felt to chuck Deans out altogether would carry the strong whiff of vindictiveness.
But those who reckon the Wallabies will benefit from Deans spending another few months running his eye over the best players in the land are off the mark.
What more will he learn about New Zealand's leading players that he doesn't already know after eight years of work in this marketplace?
A better argument might be that in few other workplaces would someone be retained, rather than paid out, once signing on with a new, rival employer.
Ditching Deans would have opened fresh issues at the Crusaders. The new coach would have been saddled with players he may not have wanted. Then he'd have sought guarantees about his continuing employment if things had gone wrong in Crusaderville next season.
Maybe it all looked like one more contractual drama the NZRU didn't need.
The talk in Australia is that just as Rod MacQueen fashioned a World Cup, Tri-Nations and Bledisloe Cup-winning operation with O'Neill and high performance manager Jeff Miller a decade ago, so a Deans-O'Neill-Pat Howard ticket has similar potential. Former Wallaby Howard is high performance boss and highly regarded as a rugby brain.
So the stage is set, the promotional gurus will be wetting themselves. Just another ho-hum Tri-Nations season coming up? Yeah right.
