2019 Rugby World Cup: Gregor Paul - The England myth All Blacks coach Steve Hansen is eager to expose

With just one selection the All Blacks have recast themselves as the big bad wolf to England's Little Red Riding Hood.

A dynamic that was being painted as the swerve and verve of the All Blacks against the crushing confrontation of England is having to be re-drawn now that Scott Barrett has been selected at blindside.

It's just one change but it's significant because it's the All Blacks' signalling they are going to target England where they have so often been portrayed as strong, but where the All Blacks suspect they are now weak.

England, the masters of physical, set-piece rugby, have a lineout that is begging to be attacked. They have a scrum that may not be as solid as everyone assumes and they might not in actual fact have all the hardware they need to work effectively in the collision zones.

They only have two genuine lineout options, which is the price they have to pay for picking twin openside flankers and the thundering Billy Vunipola at No 8 who could, should he jump, possibly get high enough to have an envelope slipped under his feet.

So the All Blacks are trying to take the sanctity of the touchline away from England. They want the lineout to be a place they fear not a place to which they escape.

But there's more yet to the Barrett introduction. There's deeper connotations.

Scott Barrett. Photo / Getty

The All Blacks aren't throwing away their all-out attack game as a result of picking Barrett, but they are making it clear they want to be yet more direct and confrontational than they were against Ireland.

The All Blacks pack is strangely never rated in the art of beating up other teams. The talk is always of their attack, of their skillsets, of their amazing capacity to conjure some ball playing magic.

It's England and South Africa who tend to hold the narrative about being bruisers, scrummagers and hard nut warriors and a bit dense and lacking out wide.

But this is a myth All Blacks coach Steve Hansen is eager to expose. The All Blacks ran Ireland ragged last week, but they beat them up first.

The damage looked like it was done by the speed and skill of the backs, of the flashing feet of Sevu Reece and George Bridge, but it was the relentless thunderous ball carrying of Kieran Read, Joe Moody and Sam Whitelock that really did the damage.

Ireland had the life drained out of them in the middle of the field by the confrontational work of the All Blacks' forwards.

That's why they didn't have the legs to chase down Reece, Bridge and Beauden Barrett when the All Blacks did opt to go wide.

Scott Barrett brings another bruising, ball carrier to the party. He's another big man with hard shoulders and soft hands: a player who can slip those telling late passes and a player who can drop his shoulder and clamber over the top of a tackler.

Ireland's vaunted defence never turned up to the quarter-final, but England's will and it's on a different level. It will require a more thorough job to break it down.

Against Australia they didn't give an inch. The Wallabies had the ball for an age, they ran this way and that, danced here and ducked there but they couldn't find even a crack to prise open and it was frustration that did them in the end.

Frustration that no holes would appear. Frustration that despite the endless onslaught, England didn't give any soft entry points – there were no dumb penalties. No rash decisions.

But the Wallabies maybe ran everywhere but the one place they should have: hard and straight up the middle of the field.

The All Blacks don't look likely to make the same mistake and that's where they are going to attack first, knowing that England, for all their resources and clever coaches, haven't actually worked out how to defy science.

Not even England can cover every inch of the field when eight of their forwards can barely move as a result of having to relentlessly tackle.

The All Blacks intend to run it straight and hard against England. Photo / Photosport

The selection of Barrett is potentially a tactical masterstroke by Hansen, but it's real value may be the psychological impact.

By sticking him in the No 6 jersey, the incredible thing is the All Blacks have a more foreboding physical presence than England do now.

England are going to maybe feel vulnerable in the places they don't typically feel vulnerable.

This will be new psychological territory for England to face an All Blacks team whose bigger threat may lie with numbers one to eight as opposed to nine to 15.

All those years of everyone bagging England for sticking the ball up their jumper and playing with the imagination of a fork and it's the All Blacks who are coming into their semifinal clash with the bigger pack and the more obvious intent and ability to dominate the set-piece.