KEY POINTS:
Defence has been the revolution inside the uprising, the major change in rugby since the game went professional.
It has become so significant that Springbok coach Jake White thinks it will decide this World Cup, an assessment All Black supremo Graham Henry digests but disputes; he thinks attacking play has to be equally potent at the tournament.
He points to the recent France-England tests where both sides had similar defensive structures but France had just a shade more on attack - voila two victories.
Every major rugby nation has a specialist defensive coach and that role falls to Henry under the All Blacks umbrella. As someone with an intense analytical attraction to rugby, Henry developed his defensive concepts as he spent hours dissecting video footage of the sport.
"I think the individual tackle technique has been a major part of the defensive changes in the game," he said. "When I coached the Blues in the middle of the '90s we did not do a lot of individual technique stuff, we probably should have but it was not something we did a lot of in those days.
"We do a lot more individual skill work and tackle work - gangtackling - which we had never done before so there is a greater emphasis on the technique of the individuals who do the job."
There was also a lot of analysis on the opposition, how they attacked and how to nullify that, a lot of work on the set piece to make sure the ball the opposition got was not high quality and, apart from technique, that was the initial key in defence.
Analysis gave coaches a good start in looking at the sort of things rivals tried, the sort of strike moves they used from set play and phase play to try to breach the advantage line. The idea was to eliminate surprises although the best sides always offered variations and mixed up their strategies.
"The key to starting the defence is to make sure your opponents get poor ball from lineout and scrum because if you achieve that then half your job is done," Henry said. "Then you are talking about a line defence from the backs from set piece involving the loose forwards, the transition zone between the forwards and the backs, and then what I call the heart defence, the picket fence from the tackle area where you have got two-thirds of the team lined up across the field."
Like every other part of rugby, defence had become much more explosive, players were hitting each other with much greater velocity and force. They spent an enormous amount of time preparing themselves for that sort of contact. They underwent strength work in the gym and worked hard on increasing their speed so that the combination of those forces created much greater impact.
When Henry played and then coached, initially, the defensive edicts were about tackling opponents around the legs.
"It is rare that happens, although sometimes you don't have a choice if someone gets some width or they are running from inside the ball carrier and that is the only option but most of the defence is now from waist to chest high, trying to stop the ball transfer," Henry said. "The game has evolved massively, the picket fence defence was not there a decade ago. Some people are better predisposed to defence because their attitude, technique and working within policy all make them into a strong tackler.
"The best defenders are very courageous, they have desire, they have that streak about them."
But the game had changed. No one could hide in defence. If they couldn't tackle, they became a liability and were targeted. A few years ago, Henry said, tackling was not such a great part of the five-eighth's portfolio and he was protected but some of those five-eighths would have to change markedly to cut it in the modern game.
If the All Blacks had not played for a while they would spend 360 minutes training during a week and a third of that time would be spent on defence. That would vary in intensity from full-on contact to walking through plans.
"If we are coming off a game that will change, what we do and how we do it," Henry said.
"And how we prepare will be different for the final stages. Early on, we will emphasise skill training while we will be more game specific later in the tournament. With a possible 53 days at the tournament that is the best way to approach it."
