Peter Bills: New Zealand's disdain for Graham Henry is baffling

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Much vituperative debate surrounded the recent re-appointment of Graham Henry as New Zealand coach.

Given that perhaps half of his fellow countrymen never wanted him in the job in the first place after the All Blacks’ failure under him at the 2007 Rugby World Cup that may not have been surprising. But they’re a strange bunch, these Kiwis. A singular people, for sure, but at times astonishingly blinkered.

Last week, I asked former Australian coach Eddie Jones what sort of success ratio most coaches would accept or indeed achieve in international rugby. "Mate, if you hit 65 per cent that’s pretty good but it’s often not quite as much as that," he told me.

When his contract as All Blacks coach was extended recently up to the 2011World Cup, Graham Henry had steered New Zealand teams to victories in 57 out of the 66 matches in which he was in charge. That is a success ratio of 86.36 per cent. Last Saturday’s 22-16 victory over Australia at Eden Park, Auckland, edged that figure up to 86.56 per cent.

I can tell you that any country in the world would risk life and death in the rush to sign up a coach with that win ratio. But in New Zealand, some continue to sneer and for the life of me, I cannot understand why.

Perhaps Henry’s public persona does him no good. He can be a man of few words, of the extremely dry quip that some people just don’t understand. But scratch away that surface and you find a man of considerable values, who warms to genuine friendship and has a caring nature. He can be extremely generous and a good listener, too.

But even if you ignore all that, a rugby coach must surely be judged by his results. And few have ever matched the kind of success ratio Henry is delivering for New Zealand.

Sure, New Zealanders are obsessed with winning the Rugby World Cup. They haven’t done so since 1987 and their nerves are already half shredded at the prospect of mucking it up again, in 2011, especially as the tournament will be held in New Zealand.

But you can’t spend your whole working life focusing on some event two, three or four years away. What are those people saying? Are they suggesting that if the All Blacks lost every game under Henry between now and 2011 but won the World Cup, that would be OK? I find that argument banal.

Sustained success is the hardest thing of all to achieve, in any sport in any part of the world. Right now, Graham Henry is far and away the most successful international rugby coach in the business.

Peter de Villiers took over as Springbok coach in early 2008. Since then, the Boks have played 16 internationals and won 11, giving de Villiers a winning ratio of 68.75 per cent. But that has been achieved with most of the squad bequeathed by World Cup winning coach Jake White. It might not be as high next year if, as is believed, the ‘Boks lose overseas some key players like Jean de Villiers, Jaque Fourie, Bryan Habana and Frans Steyn. Maybe others too.

Graham Henry’s achievement has been to attain an 86.56 per cent win ratio while his teams have been in the throes of re-building. Last year, for example, when they won the Tri-Nations title for a fourth consecutive season, all manner of changes to personnel occurred. Yet still New Zealand went on winning, the hardest thing of all for any coach to achieve.

But Henry is more successful than de Villiers in another way, too. The New Zealander heads a strong coaching triumvirate, together with Steve Hansen and Wayne Smiith. The trio are seen as equals; they work together, think as a unit and act collectively.

De Villiers has two equally able assistants, in Gary Gold and Dick Muir, men of high integrity and steeped in rugby knowledge. Yet somehow, you don’t get the same feeling of a coaching unit working on equal terms, as with the All Blacks’ management.

If that changed, some tricky times ahead for the ‘Boks could be considerably eased.