We shouldn't try to hold back opponents

Stop press: Graham Henry is human. The bubble has burst; the man we worshipped as the messiah of New Zealand rugby a little less than a year ago has shown that he is not in fact the eternally scrupulous prophet of prosperity that we thought he was.

Shock, horror New Zealand: Henry has ambitions beyond us.

The news that Henry would assist Argentina's rugby team ahead of last week's match against our beloved All Blacks caused much angst and anger among the moral guardians of our great nation.

Apparently this betrayal of ethics is even worse due to what cynics are subtly suggesting is a "crafty" voidance of a deal struck with the NZRU to avoid exactly this situation. If it really is as easy as signing a contract to be technical director of the Blues to render a contract pertaining to an entirely different possibility obsolete, then the NZRU surely should be asking questions of those who drew up the contract rather than Henry himself.

The simple reality we must accept is that Henry is, like ourselves, a human being with aspirations and ambitions himself. We should not be so foolish and self-absorbed to assume these can never exist beyond the All Blacks.

In all seriousness, what did we expect him to do other than return to coaching rugby teams? Clearly the way to do this at the highest level is in the international arena, and that will necessarily mean his work, at some point or another, will collide with the All Blacks.

Did we expect him to return to teaching children? I'm really not sure that would be in his best interests. And, judging by the personality (or lack thereof) he displayed in media appearances during his All Black tenure, I'm not sure it would be in the interests of the students either.

Furthermore, one would hope we would have had the self-belief to back our team to take on any challenge put in front of us. Surely the world champions are good enough to take on a team with a little extra coaching and perhaps an extra smidgen of tactical insight; last weekend showed that we were.

If anything this was the first true test for Steve Hansen. He finally had to show some creativity; he had to deviate from the tactics of old under Henry, because failing to do so would play into the hands of the Argentinians. And for a long time during the game it appeared that Hansen had failed this test, and it's certainly a reasonable view to hold that the All Blacks underperformed against the Argentinians.

But a broader issue is raised by the condemnation of the apparently unscrupulous Henry by those in the media and public at large: how much should we really expect of our sportspeople?

Henry hasn't committed a crime or anything remotely close to one. Yet he is condemned by so many. Is it because we expect those who reach the pinnacle of sport to be perfect role models for society and eternal servants of our interests and values?

If that's the case, why haven't we ostracised Jesse Ryder after his countless drunken nights out? Why haven't we terminated the New Zealand rugby contract of Zac Guildford for his drunken rampage in the Pacific?

Surely the example we strive to set should be targeted in more extreme cases such as these, rather than the legitimate career choices of a man who has done perhaps as much for New Zealand rugby as anyone else has done in decades.

The final comparison particularly pertinent to this issue is one with other coaches of sporting teams. In most professional sport, coaches do not face the same denouncement when they go and coach competitors. Andre Villas Boas is not reviled by Chelsea fans for now managing Tottenham Hotspur (though he may be reviled for the damage he did to the club when he was there!). Similarly, no one complains about Roy Hodgson coaching the English football team having previously coached Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates and Finland. His time coaching in Sweden left a lasting impact on the country's style of football. Yet coaching the English football team to beat Sweden in Euro 2012 was never regarded as immoral. Few have begrudged Robbie Deans a move to Australia which, clearly, was in his own career interests.

Henry has made a decision based on his own aspirations, just as virtually every other Kiwi has done in their own careers. New Zealand should stop searching for excuses for our under-performance, and instead spend our energy supporting our team rather than trying to hold back our opponents. It is when we do that that we can regard ourselves as legitimate fans of sport, and not just the All Blacks.