Henry reviews All Blacks' campaign

Abit like the effects of the jetlag he is still fighting, All Black coach Graham Henry is in two minds about his side's winter campaign.

Most of his thoughts are positive. He believes the All Blacks played to about 75 per cent of their potential during a three-month campaign which took in nine tests in New Zealand, Argentina, Australia and South Africa.

But then the woozy feeling sets in when he talks about the 21-20 loss to the Springboks at the Royal Bafokeng Sports Palace a week ago.

The coach felt there was enough incentive for the All Blacks but the side fell away for their solitary season defeat.

"Perhaps the players felt they had achieved enough, I don't know," Henry said.

The side's first defeat in 16 tests reignited a warning light Henry noticed on the Grand Slam tour last season and at a few other stages of his three-season tenure with the All Blacks: On longer tours, the All Blacks did not sustain their performance.

"Late last year we started well against Wales and Ireland and then, while we had an interesting game against England and showed a lot of backbone, we did not play the game well," he said.

"We are away for 34 days at the end of this year and play four tests and the challenge there is for us to keep our levels," Henry said. "We have shown we start strongly but do not continue with that.

"The World Cup will be even longer, we are away for 53 days and the real challenge there for the group will be about maintaining standards."

Every side the All Blacks played were pumped, playing with extra passion as they tangled with the world's No 1 side.

"We have to absorb the pressure for at least 20 minutes in every test. They play on emotion and that is not going to win you games consistently," Henry said.

"We try to be clinical rather than emotional because if you can't find that emotional button, where do you go?"

It was a gloomy All Black convoy which dodged goats, cattle and people who wandered across the 40km of road back to the team hotel from Rustenburg. The beer was out but the party lacked gusto.

The All Blacks had been unable to convert enough of their many line breaks. They felt they had lost the test, the Springboks had not won it.

From the defeat, Henry said, the analysis would resume. There were concerns about the obvious lineout defects and the need to address the complacency. Those issues would tax the coaching staff before the squad was picked to tour England, France and Wales.

"But if you had said to us at the start of the year, 'What do you want to achieve?' I think we would have probably ticked most of the boxes," Henry said.

"We have achieved a broader group of players who can cope with international rugby. For example, if we lose Daniel Carter then we think Luke McAlister can play there or, from what we have seen in the Air New Zealand Cup, Nick Evans could do the job too."

The objective this season had been to increase the player choices across the park and that had been a positive advance.

Henry thought the balance of attacking force against defensive might was fairly sound; many of the tries conceded were from All Black mistakes like interceptions, charge-downs or driving lineouts rather than creativity.

In nine test this year the All Blacks scored 26 tries and conceded 17, while ace goalkicker Daniel Carter succeeded with 75.4 per cent of his shots at goal.

The best defensive effort, according to Henry, came against the Wallabies in Brisbane. That effort won the test as the All Blacks repelled the best Wallaby performance of the Tri-Nations.

Attacking plans were suffering because of the lineout problems. The scrum was perhaps the best in the Tri-Nations with world-class props Tony Woodcock and Carl Hayman, but lineouts were an issue. "They will be a major focus for us for this next tour," Henry said.

"It is not an easy area of the game, it is much tougher to get right than the scrum, but we have to reassess things."

Henry would not be drawn on whether another lineout option had to be added to the loose forwards, someone like Reuben Thorne, Troy Flavell or Jason Eaton.

Nor would he discuss his reaction to the standoff between the NZRU and News Ltd about exempting players from next year's Super 14.

He explained the anomaly of rotating most of the squad while playing captain Richie McCaw and Carter in the final six tests as a necessity.

"We have got a responsibility to win as well as balance our inspection of players," Henry said.

"While trying to build depth we could not afford to get beaten either, otherwise you guys would have a field day.

"We had to have our captain and our navigator."

Those who had been injured and would come back into contention for the end-of-year tour were James Ryan, Sione Lauaki, Nick Evans, Conrad Smith and Ma'a Nonu, but Flavell would not recover in time.

"Now is our time for reassessment," Henry said.

"Since the Tri-Nations in 2004 when we [the coaches] spent a week going over a great deal of things, we have not spent a lot of time assessing ourselves."

The coaches and management will meet during the next week to review their last three months and how to pursue their November trip to Europe.