All Blacks: Power to rest with players

Player management will be key to the World Cup campaigns. Photo / Getty Images

Senior All Blacks will control their Super 15 workloads next year, having made it clear they want to be fully engaged in the competition.

The All Black coaches met their Super 15 counterparts early last week to determine how best to handle the country's best players throughout the extended competition that will lead straight into the Tri Nations, then the World Cup.

With a potential 19 Super 15 games, four Tri Nations tests and then possibly seven World Cup fixtures in the space of 35 weeks, the All Black coaches are conscious that their best players could be virtually dead on their feet by September if they are not carefully managed.

Renowned sports scientist, South African Tim Noakes, has a firm view on optimum workloads and says: "I believe the ideal for 2011 would be 16 or 17 games. We have to find a way of bringing 29 down to 17.

"If one of South Africa, New Zealand or Australia win, it will be because they managed their players the best. If your top players play throughout the entire season, there is no way that you will win the World Cup. In that case it will open the door for countries like France, England and Argentina."

All Black coach Graham Henry is aware how critical the next nine months will be as he chases World Cup redemption. The All Blacks have been one step ahead all season and they need to remain there in the way they navigate the Super 15.

But instead of the 2007 plan, when 22 leading players were removed from the first seven weeks of Super 14 so they could rest and condition, this time round the management will be player-led and subtle.

There will be no fixed quotas nor blanket directives. Instead it will largely be up to players to communicate with their Super 15 coaches how much football they feel they can play.

Another meeting is scheduled for December where more detail can be fleshed out but it would appear that most All Blacks have said they want to begin training for next season on January 26 ahead of the February 18 kickoff.

It's possible that some players might seek an extended off-season and rejoin their franchise later than that but the prospect of anyone missing large swathes of the season is not on the cards. It is likely that most All Blacks will play the majority of the campaign, injury and form depending, sitting out a couple of pre-determined fixtures as has pretty much been the case for the last few seasons.

The recommendation this time round will be that, on those occasions when players know they will be rested, they will disappear from the team environment for the full week to enjoy a complete mental retreat.

Chiefs coach Ian Foster said New Zealand was in the unprecedented position of having the most experienced team in history and that it was vital those senior players were fully involved in Super 15 to guide and mentor the next generation.

"In the case of the Chiefs, we have seven games then a bye. Then we have six games and another bye with three more round-robin games and hopefully three play-off games. So no one is ever going to play more than seven weeks in a row and I think in the case of someone like Mils [Muliaina] you could probably add another week off around one of the byes.

"The critical point is that the senior players have said they want to be fully engaged in the competition - that is very important to them."

A sense of disengagement was one of the biggest failures of the 2007 plan to keep players out until midway through the competition.

While the strategy made sense in theory, it was a disaster in practice with no cohesive plan on how players would be re-introduced. Some key men such as Ali Williams couldn't get a start and they reached the June tests horribly short of match sharpness.

The master plan that was supposedly going to give the All Blacks a critical advantage in France ended up being the very thing that destroyed their dream. Too many players were undercooked - they didn't have time to develop instinctive practices that are vital in test football. That lack of game time eroded the confidence of even the best and many reached June without feeling they had ever been properly involved in Super rugby.

The conditioning group came in halfway through, took three or four weeks to find their feet and by the time they were just settling it was all over. With rotation still rife within the All Black camp at that point, angst and frustration built and so many players, including Dan Carter and Richie McCaw, never hit top gear or even got particularly close either before or during the World Cup.

These critical failings have been analysed which is why the players don't want to be left on the periphery again.

New Highlanders coach Jamie Joseph says he plans to split the season into blocks of three or four games. "We won't just be looking at the workloads of Tom Donnelly and Adam Thomson," says Joseph. "We will be looking at everyone's workloads. It's a longer Competition and we have bigger squads and I think it is important that everyone feels involved."