KEY POINTS:
Innovation is all well and good but sometimes sticking with tradition is best. Like when it comes to the balance of the All Black back row.
This year the coaching panel hit upon the idea of using left and right flankers. At first they kept it quiet. They preferred to let everyone think they had lost the plot a little by randomly selecting Jerome Kaino - a man who had played blindside for the Blues all season - at No 8 and playing long-term No 8 Rodney So'oialo at blindside.
The reason the All Black coaches didn't really explain the move was they wanted opponents to work it out for themselves - the All Blacks were no longer playing with a traditional openside and blindside; they were working flankers in a left and right format.
When the thinking was explained, it made sense. The rationale was two-fold; it was partly about preserving the career of Richie McCaw. The All Black captain, easily the best openside in the world, was being protected a little from the relentless contact dished out to an authentic No 7.
At 27 and having played a lot of high-impact rugby since 2000, McCaw has taken a huge amount of punishment over the years. If a switch to the left and right format could ease some of his physical burden and keep him in the game for a season longer, then great.
The switch also came with the bonus of supposedly improving the effectiveness of the All Black loose trio. With McCaw having improved his ball-carrying in recent years, it was felt he would get more opportunity to run at people if he was not buried at the bottom of every ruck.
The theory was great. It all made sense and in practice it worked well enough in the first three tests without ever being a roaring success.
When McCaw was forced out of the tests against the Boks, the selectors had no choice but to stick with it as they had no genuine No 7 they were prepared to start.
Daniel Braid was injured, too. Tanerau Latimer was not considered ready and Chris Masoe not good enough. The So'oialo/Adam Thomson partnership went well in Wellington and only so-so in Dunedin and that really should have been the signal to shelve the idea.
It hasn't been an abject failure. It's gone okay but okay is not quite good enough. When Braid was included in last night's starting team, the All Blacks had a genuine No 7. And Braid really is an authentic fetcher, a smaller man who is good on the ground, quick to the breakdown and an excellent link man.
He is not a bruising ball carrier or a ball-lodging, destructive tackler. His skills would be best utilised in a traditional loose forward mix where the blindside sticks to knocking people down and the openside to snaffling turnovers.
And while the All Blacks coaches might argue the toss and point to his heroic performances in the first three tests of the year, the truth is that McCaw is a genuine openside and probably does more for the team when he is asked to play as a traditional No 7.
As the captain himself acknowledged a few weeks ago, the left and right format has done little to preserve his body.
He says it makes "stuff-all" difference as he throws himself at everything regardless of his role.
It was worthwhile taking the time to see whether the new thinking would work.
A similar idea was hatched in 2006 when McCaw and his openside understudy Marty Holah played together against Ireland.
Holah, who like Braid was an out-and-out fetcher, didn't settle into the role of blindside and was removed after 40 minutes and the idea of the tandem flyer strategy was shelved.
There was a realisation the traditional format is the one that works best in New Zealand.
The best loose trios, certainly the best ones during the professional era, have featured a ball-winning 7 and more physical No 6.
The great All Black side of 1996 and 1997 had Josh Kronfeld at openside and Michael Jones, by then a heavyweight No 6, working together with Zinzan Brooke at No 8.
In 2005, when the All Blacks dominated world rugby, Richie McCaw was used as a genuine openside with Jerry Collins - one of the last great enforcers - entrenched on the blindside and So'oialo at No 8.
Those combinations worked because every player was asked to play to his core strengths and it just so happened their core skills all complemented each other.
Traditions become traditions for a reason and to break them, the new idea has to be better.
