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Nothing is going right for the man who did nothing wrong. The World Cup news got even worse for Graham Henry as world champions England edged out the hosts France in a tense Paris semifinal yesterday.
Not only does New Zealand not have the "the little yellow cup"
as Henry called the object in whose name he turned New Zealand rugby upside down, but the team who bundled the All Blacks out won't have it either.
The truth about Bernard Laporte's France was exposed at the Stade de France yesterday morning - an average and ageing side that a decent All Black unit should have put to the sword, as indeed they had done a number of times over the previous few years.
Henry, the great vacationer, may claim that he got nothing wrong in his World Cup campaign. But the further away you get from the Cardiff disaster the less important the out-of-his-depth referee becomes, and the more significant the All Blacks' ludicrous selection policies and rest-obsessed preparations appear.
Instead of haranguing Wayne Barnes, maybe we should be turning the blowtorch on to Wayne Smith, who along with Henry was presumably responsible for putting together the shambolic backline that thought it was playing a Super 14 trial match at the Millennium Stadium.
England's semifinal win over France was rugby at either its most glorious or tedious, depending on your emotional ties to the game.
An impartial observer may have struggled with all the kicking and the way the mysteries of the rugby rule book again influenced a result, although I thought it was a tremendous contest played with the sort of desperation that a World Cup should bring out in players. For those supporting England or France it must have been a gripping, titanic battle.
The World Cup is a cynical, brutal battleground. It was, in the All Blacks' case, a place for the hard-headed nous of Aaron Mauger and the in-form completeness of Doug Howlett, and not a stage on which to drop the hit-or-miss shenanigans of Luke McAlister or the lost talents of Sitiveni Sivivatu. What on earth were Henry and co thinking, especially as the All Black ace Dan Carter was struggling with injury and always plays better with Mauger alongside?
At least if France had exploded on their home turf and put England to the sword then Henry's All Black regime might have found an out-clause, and told those of us who are his ardent critics that we, rather than Henry himself, had underestimated France.
But no. France were brave and tough against England, had touches of invention, but were plainly plain. In this momentous game on their home patch, they could not even score a try.
England were hardly devastating in victory, and prevailed despite Jonny Wilkinson having what, for him, was another average World Cup day with his place and drop goal kicking.
France, I felt, were hard done by in the closing stages when scrumming near the England line, following some brilliant English cover defence. England were allowed to get away with murder by referee Jonathan Kaplan at that scrum.
The rulebook is the rulebook, but it was also deflating to see this contest decided, essentially, on a penalty decision in which the replacement French hooker Dimitri Szarzewski committed a high tackle that would have been troubled knocking down a butterfly.
Then again, Szarzewski's tackle was lazy and downright irresponsible in the circumstances.
England were belligerent and coherent. They played to and within their limits - apart from Jonny's surprising problems kicking at goal with the World Cup ball.
We are having to eat our words, and England's dust. What a rugby week, and the really galling part has been the way Henry has clung to the claim that the All Blacks got everything right in four years of overwhelming preparations.
Off he went, after the Cardiff collapse, banging on about the fabulous group of young athletes, the depth, the number one world ranking, and that he is "totally comfortable" with the strategies.
This was the World Cup, pal - the be-all and end-all, according to you.
Maybe a rock star mentality invades people of a certain initial character after they have been installed as demigods. Maybe, consciously or subconsciously, they get to a point where they believe they can say or do anything no matter what the reality is.
This might be the only explanation for an All Black coach who made a point of praising his players' behaviour knowing full well that one of them had just been trampling on vehicles in London.
"We will get it," Henry said of the little yellow thing, "if we continue with the same traditions and hard work in New Zealand rugby."
Choke is the word that comes to mind here, because you had to, equating those words to those images from Corsica and a tradition in which the All Blacks have failed to lift "Little Yeller" for 20 years.
It is simply not natural or healthy for anyone to truly believe that they have done everything right, especially when you fall so short of the target.
Which brings us back to Jonny Wilkinson.
His ripping drop goal in Paris was the final nail in the French coffin, and it hammered home another point about the All Blacks' campaign. The precise way in which Wilkinson organises drop goal attempts, whether they go over or not, says much about his game, and must make All Black supporters weep considering the way their side blundered in this department in Cardiff.
Wilkinson profiles always dip into his world of obsession - from his training methods to sitting in the same numbered plane seat. God knows how he feels if ever forced to hop on a plane that isn't big enough to have seat 64J, but it must be pure hell for the boy. You wouldn't be surprised if he carried around a little 64J seat number adaptor kit.
Yet he and England are still hardly in vintage form, and who could have guessed at their progress into this World Cup final. Before the tournament they were rated at around 33-1, odds that leant heavily on sentiment.
Their coach Brian Ashton appears almost dazed and unprepared by their progress, an image enhanced in Paris by his open-collared look, as if it had never occurred to him that he might need to get dressed up for a presentation.
England are not on the winner's podium yet of course, but they have progressed much further than most of us thought they would.
Wilkinson will not have walked from the Paris turf believing or claiming that he had done everything right either. He will already been poring over the things he got wrong.
