All Blacks: Secret squirrel silliness

Steve Hansen. Photo / Getty Images

A culture of paranoia is gripping All Black management - as it seemingly always does when they head to the UK.

Team namings have been pushed back from Tuesdays to Thursdays, to cut down the time opponents can analyse the All Blacks and prepare with specific knowledge of the starting XV they will face.

All season until now, the All Blacks have named their team on a Tuesday, as they did last year. It created a few issues with the media.

They are invited and encouraged to attend training to gain a better picture of what the coaches are trying to achieve, but clashes have been frequent.

Anyone paying attention at training on Monday will be able to work out the starting XV. It often appears in print, as "likely changes" on Tuesday morning before the official naming. The All Black management then get enormously prickly.

Earlier last week, assistant coach Steve Hansen outlined the new strategy and then suggested the travelling New Zealand media had to show some good old patriotic spirit and keep any hint of the starting team out of the public arena until it is officially named.

It's all part of a culture that says test match football is all about inches and it's reckless to hand the opposition a couple for free. But these are not inches that will set the opposition down any road with a meaningful destination.

Frankly, the All Blacks could invite England coach Martin Johnson to attend every training session in the build-up to the test and he wouldn't learn a single thing he didn't already know.

If he knew the team today rather than 48 hours before the test, it wouldn't make the first bit of difference. Toby Flood wouldn't suddenly know how to run a game.

The All Blacks have played nine tests this year. Video footage of every second is freely available to Johnson and the rest of the All Blacks' opponents. They can study patterns, look for cues, analyse individual player strengths and weaknesses.

But even then that knowledge has to be practically applied, otherwise it's useless. Anyone can spend hours analysing Dan Carter but does it actually make it easier to close him down and reduce his influence?

Last year when Victor Matfield was killing the All Black lineout, everyone in the world knew the Springboks were going to throw flat and hard to the middle every time. It wasn't a secret - yet maybe once in 240 minutes of rugby did the All Blacks steal one off him.

The whole paranoia thing - delaying the naming of the team, having security patrol training and evicting those who look suspicious, is a little unbecoming.

In 2005, assistant coach Wayne Smith tripped over two blokes lying on the side of the training field in London who were wearing camouflage while they filmed from behind a bush.

If the footage ever got back to the English camp, it didn't do them any good. The All Blacks don't need to be secretive, nor give the impression they need every advantage available. They are too good for that.