All Blacks: Physical education

Conrad Smith runs through Australia's defence in the Bledisloe Cup match in Tokyo last month. Photo / Getty Images

Conrad Smith is the perfect gauge to show how rugby continues to advance athletically at the most frightening pace.

He made his All Black debut five years ago in Rome. Back then he was a bean pole, dripping wet all of 85kg.

This morning, he sat in the steepling stands of the San Siro a full 11kg heavier. The sapling is now an oak tree. Smith is about 30 per cent more powerful; 30 per cent more explosive than he was in 2004.

There are other measures from the last two Italian adventures that show how the athlete continues to evolve at staggering pace. Saimone Taumeopeau also made his test debut in Rome. He was just 105kg. In the second row that day was Norm Maxwell, all 106kg of him. On the eve of the Tri Nations, All Black assistant coach Steve Hansen said that international props really have to be a minimum of 115kg. Anything lighter and they are vulnerable.

Compare those two with the men who played this morning. At loosehead was Wyatt Crockett - a beast of a man. He's 1.93m and 115kg and growing. In the second row were Tom Donnelly and Anthony Boric - both weighing in at 113kg. Isaac Ross, one of the most promising locks in the country, is being left at home so he can put some bulk on his 113kg frame. At his current weight, he can't knock people off the ball at the clean-out.

The athletes are being asked to work harder and harder on the physical side of their development and Henry says there is one simple, over-riding reason for that.

"There is so much analysis done on the game that the only way you can actually break down defences is to be more physical than the opposition. You have got to win the contact areas. You have got to win them in the tackles and you have got to win them when you carry the pill.

"To do that, you need big, strong explosive athletes. And to do that, more and more guys are spending time with conditioning coaches and doing very functional training in the gym.

"I think what has happened is that the guys have got to be big, strong men but they have not always been that functional and that has attacked the flexibility of some of the joints and caused injury. More and more thought has been going in to make sure that the programmes are functional. The more functional it can be, the better."

This all sounds a little robotic - as if teams can succeed can by sweating their athletes in the gym and producing muscle-bound lugs who can smash their way to glory.

Can brawn really be all a team needs to win tests?

The answer to that is no, as the All Blacks have discovered this season. The emphasis on physical evolution has stunted the growth of the other skills required to win at this level.

Henry freely admits that the All Blacks were horribly exposed this year as a side lacking in the basic requirements of kick and catch. The path of evolution has to divert if the All Blacks are to return to the top of the pile.

"There is more kicking in the game and I think anyone who has been watching will have seen we have been found wanting in the back three because we don't have great catchers of the high ball. Some of these players might be great athletes but if they can't do that ... so that's become a real issue. High ball ability and kicking ability have become essential for all backs.

"We have always worked on skill development but we are doing so more and more. It is fair to say we are working more on skill now than we ever have. And we are finding quite a few guys are coming through the system now who are good footballers, but lacking in a particular facet of the game or this or that."

It's this skills gap which has seen the likes of Ben Smith, Zac Guildford and Mike Delany make this tour while Joe Rokocoko and Hosea Gear remain in New Zealand.

Henry doesn't state it in such explicit terms but it is clear he and his coaching team are trying to take the initiative again - to get back to being leaders and not followers.

The All Blacks are in the process of building a new breed of athlete that is not only physically robust but also highly skilled.

They have learned the hard way that the collision is the starting point - not the be all and all. There has to be a mix. Brutality won't work on its own which is why we can expect to see the physical evolution plateau in the next few years.

For a while, it was easy to believe we would be seeing 125kg props as the norm. That locks would have to be at least 130kg to get a look in and loosies would be 115kg-plus. That was the pace of the physical evolution. Between 1995 and 2005, on average the players became 10kg heavier. Henry is going to put the brakes on that.

Instead we might see players who can pass the ball five metres further - not through increased strength, but because they improve technically. We might see players kick the ball further. We might see the top goal-kickers nudge up from 80 per cent success rates to around 85 per cent or higher.

We have lived through the most extreme changes in the physicality of the sport - now Henry is set to give us the skills revolution.