All Blacks: Life on Planet Rugby

The All Blacks struggled to compete at the breakdown and set pieces in this year's early tests. Photo / Getty Images

There has always been a certainty about the way Graham Henry wants his All Blacks to play. Until this year. Then the picture became confused and for the first time in his six years in charge, no one, not even the man himself, had any real idea what he was trying to do.

The double header in South Africa was a series many New Zealanders would like to blank out; forget it ever happened. It was headless football from the All Blacks that brought them crashing down.

They were trying to run at a time when everyone else could see the game was all about kicking. They were talking of explosive power on the wings when it was clear the new core skills were catching and kicking. They were in the tap-and-run mentality of the ELVs and couldn't adjust. The All Blacks blinked and the game moved past them.

"I think the easiest way to explain it is if you look at the Super 14 and the way it was played with the free kicks and what not, it was like watching a game being played on Mars," says assistant All Black coach Wayne Smith. "And then the tests were played on Venus - so it was a totally different game.

"When France came out for those early tests, we had to go and play on Venus, so we had to fly from Mars.

"All of a sudden, you had guys who were used to tapping the ball and going instead of setting another scrum - and they were being smashed.

"They were being driven 30 metres by a French pack and being scrummaged into the ground, so of course we were in trouble. We probably struggled for a period getting back to that sort of game."

For a side that prides itself on innovation, it was strange indeed that the All Blacks took so long to adjust to the world around them.

It was almost as if they were aware of how things were changing but were stubbornly sticking to their belief that running from everywhere could succeed.

Henry, after all, has said many times that he doesn't believe his players would respond to bash-and-kick football. He said it immediately after the World Cup loss to France in 2007 and has repeated his belief since.

But as the season draws to a close, the All Blacks have reached the end of the year a vastly different team to the one they were in July and August.

"For the first time this year, we have some sort of stability and consistency," said Henry earlier last week.

"We had some injuries at the start of the year and that had an effect."

In those early tests, they were without Richie McCaw, Dan Carter, Ali Williams, Conrad Smith and Rodney So'oialo. McCaw and Smith were back for the Tri Nations but Carter was still missing and his absence made it hard, very hard, for the All Blacks to play with authority.

The presence of Stephen Donald in the No 10 jersey was a major factor in why the All Blacks played with so little structure and direction in the early part of the Tri Nations.

It's not just stability of personnel that Henry was referring to. He was alluding to the way the All Blacks started to play in the back half of the season.

The maverick was put out with the trash. From once being the most adventurous and expansive side on the planet, the All Blacks had a touch of England about them.

In their first three games on this tour, they only scored three tries. This is not the All Blacks of old. The team that played under Henry in 2006 romped through Europe, scoring 18 tries along the way. In 2005 they scored 16 on their Grand Slam tour, while even last year, they managed 12 in their four tests in the UK.

It's puzzling. The All Blacks have dried up. They are not a team of daring enterprise with the ball in hand any more.

They have kicked the ball extensively on their tour of Europe. Carter has played for position and he has been happy to stick the ball in the air when he's not sure there is much else on.

The game plan is all about field position and ball security. The defence is the crushing weapon, with the ferocity of the tackling a key weapon in pressuring opponents.

The All Blacks now live off other team's mistakes more than they ever have.

Taking Smith's analogy - the All Blacks are now residents on Venus; they play that set-piece, grinding game and win tests with execution of the basics.

It's been a painful transition for some people to comprehend. It just doesn't seem right and there has been widespread complaints lamenting the death of running rugby. There is a genuine sense of disbelief that there is no champion of the beautiful game any more.

Not even the All Blacks, the one side determined to play with width, flair in the midfield and finishers on the wing, are indulging in a more encompassing style.

But maybe that is about to come. The talk throughout the tour from the players has been about their determination to strike a better balance.

McCaw has talked of his frustration at the failure to put teams away; to really open someone up by increasing the tempo and using running and handling power to score tries.

Answering why they haven't been able to click the way they used to is not so easy. There are a few reasons to ponder. The scarring of the losses to South Africa is deep.

What those three losses hammered home to the players is that they can't win a test without first building a platform. It's non-negotiable that the lineout functions and that the scrum stays steady. The breakdown is all about power in the collision and physical presence and the players have to front there, too.

Getting the basics right - being aggressive and accurate in all the physical contact zones - has been the major emphasis and it's an area of the game where the All Blacks have impressed on this tour. They have ticked that box, but their focus has been so intense, they have maybe neglected other facets of their game.

The last few months have been about rebuilding; about regaining control of the football and squeezing teams with quality execution of the basics. It's only now that the confidence is rising and with it is coming this desire to be more expansive when the opportunity arises.

There was certainly greater willingness to counter-attack from deep against England. That is where the All Blacks will slowly transform the game again.

It is their intention to deter sides from kicking so much next season by successively counter-attacking. They want teams to be scared of kicking to them - to fear they will be setting up the All Black back three for potentially costly counter-attacking opportunities.

The reason they haven't quite managed it on this tour is that they are out of practice. Counter-attack is about knowing when to do it and picking the right support lines and making the right passes. Slowly it is improving.

One of the other reasons we haven't seen too much flowing attack is that the coaches could be deliberately keeping things under wraps at this stage. The attack with ball in hand - when it has been tried - hasn't been too different to anything we have seen in the past. There are subtle differences but the players are all confident that, with more time in the job, new attack coach Steve Hansen is going to make a difference.

The All Blacks don't want to be boring and their progress towards more expansive and adventurous rugby will continue next year. But the All Blacks won't return to the game plan of 2005 and 2006. They can't because the game has changed too much.

What we will see is the same focus on the set piece; the same desire to win the contest at the breakdown; and the same appetite to play for territory.

But there will be a mix. The traditional skills will be all about building a platform from which the All Blacks can find their width. There will be more encouragement to take a few more risks - so they live mainly on Venus but hop across more often to Mars.