Rugby: All Blacks look to feed off raw emotion

Graham Henry and Richie McCaw. Photo / Getty Images

Reluctant to touch it in 2007, the All Blacks of 2011 will push what they call the 'emotional button' in the final stages of the World Cup.

If Graham Henry has an overriding regret from the last campaign, it was the failure to predict the emotional intensity of their quarter-final clash against France.

The All Blacks, as captain Richie McCaw revealed two weeks ago, had thoughts about the semifinal leading into the Cardiff encounter.

The French, meanwhile, never entertained the notion there was anything else to worry about than the game that lay ahead.

They famously lined up to face the haka in an array of training and tracksuit tops and match jerseys to form the colours of the French flag.

They played on emotion all game - drawing on their passion, their sense of nationality and desire to honour their nation to make more than 300 tackles.

Only three months prior to the quarter-final, the All Blacks had hammered France twice. In November 2006, they posted a famously good 47-3 victory in Lyon. Yet somehow, when it mattered, the French found enormous improvements in their game. The All Blacks didn't.

"Straight after the Cardiff game in 2007, I thought why can't we go back?" laments Henry. "We made a decision not to - it was made by the senior players and coaches," he says of their rejection of the idea that they needed to dip into the emotional well to play that game. "You live and learn."

Looking back now, it seems a big and obvious mistake to have made but, as Henry explains, the All Blacks enjoyed a sustained period of success in 2005 and 2006 by steadfastly refusing to play off emotion. They beat the Lions in 2005, won a Grand Slam, took out the Tri Nations twice and posted record defeats of France.

"I know this is something that might sound naive and ridiculous but we had success by not doing that. We had won a Grand Slam. We have got the formula. We know what we are doing. Bullshit. We didn't."

That is Henry's way of explaining that another key lesson learned is the need to see World Cups as entirely disconnected from all that has gone before. What works in sustaining a legacy of success might not be the right way to plan and prepare for a six-week tournament.

France, South Africa and England in particular have shown in the past that they can bring an extra dimension to their World Cup performances. They rise to the occasion and, if the All Blacks are to beat any of these teams later this year, Henry reckons his side will need to find an extra 15 per cent.

"I think one of the issues that we need to face is that quite often we are ranked No 1 in the world," he says. "I think that has got its negatives. It may not be obvious. It may be there is a subconscious thought there that you are good enough. And that subconscious thought may be a negative. It may not give you the edge that you need to do the business.

"We worked very hard on mental strength but we wonder, if we had been stronger mentally, whether we would have knocked over the French. It's always a biggie - being able to perform under intense pressure and doing it when things you don't expect to happen, happen."

Since his first year in the job, Henry has seen how other nations have been able to lift themselves on certain occasions.

The Springboks have been the best at it. In 2004, Henry saw how the Boks played with an almost unmatchable intensity at Ellis Park when Nelson Mandela was present. They saw again last year how the Boks thrived on the energy that was created by the 93,000-strong crowd in Soweto.

The English have been good at it, too, showing in recent years the ability to be snarling and aggressive whenever they face Australia, for example. Playing in front of their own people, the All Blacks have a gilt-edged opportunity to tap into their home support; to feed off the obvious pride the nation will be storing as hosts.

The relationship between the All Blacks and the country needs to be symbiotic. In 2007, the All Blacks were placed in a rotten pool where they didn't need to get out of third gear to defeat a lacklustre Italian team, a second-choice Scottish team, Romania and Portugal.

Henry also made what he feels now was a mistake of rotating players too heavily in those early encounters. This time round they are likely to play "most of the same games most of the time".

Continuity will be the selection theme. Emotional intensity and mental strength will be the key planks of the psychological preparation.

Tactically? That is a case of wait and see.