KEY POINTS:
Try to find the keys to a successful backline and Wayne Smith will tell you to look at the forwards.
The All Blacks assistant coach is reluctant to split the two parts of the team into separate entities.
"You've got to have a forward pack that'll provide front-foot ball," he says.
"I like to look at back attack as team attack. It's not a unit operating independently from another unit. They are so reliant on each other.
"Communication is so important. [You need] good understanding throughout the whole team - that if you're going to use this move in attack we need this presentation of the ball."
Smith has been part of Graham Henry's selection/coaching panel since 2004. He spent two years as All Black supremo in 2000-01 and is relishing being back in the fold.
A deep thinker on all things rugby and a former All Black first five-eighth with 17 tests among his 35 appearances from 1980-85, his primary role has been the backline.
In 2004, the All Blacks' first test was against England, fresh from their World Cup triumph in Sydney the previous November. The All Blacks walloped them 36-3 at Carisbrook. Four of that backline - Mils Muliaina, Doug Howlett, Joe Rokocoko and Dan Carter - are in France. The other three were Tana Umaga, Carlos Spencer and Justin Marshall.
Those were the days of the flat backline and while those exact words don't pass Smith's lips, he remembers it as a critical year in the development for this World Cup.
The selectors felt the backs were outstanding attackers playing with some depth, but that opponents were sliding off and out, meaning players at times had three or four defenders to try to combat.
"We were pretty adamant we were going to stop the opposition recovering, committing them and fixing them to the spot," Smith says.
For a time it worked well, "but when we got into pressure situations we found that while the idea was good the execution wasn't".
They lost to the Wallabies in Australia, 23-18, then conceded 40 points to South Africa in Johannesburg.
So it was back to the drawing board.
"My memory of that year is going back to real basics. We wanted to play a wide game but struggled to pass with any width. Our timing was off.
"After the Tri-Nations a lot of the public were frustrated, but we believed in what we were doing. We went to the UK and the rest is history from that point.
"We started executing better because we had belief in what we were trying to do."
It culminated in the 45-6 crushing of France in Paris that November, still held as the supreme performance under Henry's reign.
Smith says the philosophy has remained, but ways are being developed to offer plans B and C. The All Blacks have a wide menu of moves to be used at different times on different occasions.
He says many of the fundamentals of attacking back play are simple skills; the key is knowing when to use them.
It is too simplistic to talk of certain players having instinctive skills.
"You've still got to practice your skills. The more you practice, the more you simulate situations, the more you experience situations in a game the better you do it."
Smith talks of "recognitional decision-making", that is "about seeing the situation, understanding it instantly and choosing the right option. It looks like flair, but it's well rehearsed. That's why you train, you do your homework, you visualise, so on the spur of the moment you don't have to think. You trust your instincts."
For Smith, the most satisfying aspect of the past four years has been seeing the development of the All Blacks. There is a mantra about better people becoming better All Blacks. He's a fierce protector of the All Black tradition and takes pride in what it means to be one and the importance of the words retaining their lustre.
"We take seriously the philosophy that you're an All Black 24/7. Polish the jewel, don't tarnish it. Those are the things I've always remembered.
"Trophies tarnish. I've got some at home, I wouldn't know where they are. But I still go out for meals with players, see their kids. It's the people that really count in the end."
Since Henry took charge, 23 backs have started tests for the All Blacks. Smith is confident all stones have been turned over, no one has been missed in the planning for France.
"We tried to prepare for this better than any other team," he says. "Control things we were able to control. We road-tested venues, the people we are going to use there, schedules, hotels.
"And we've looked at players, some have come in and gone out; some have gone out and come back in.
"It's a complex task and while I would say it's been very well planned, it doesn't guarantee anything. But all these little things have made small differences over the last few years."
