Peter Bills: Great coach doesn't deserve such flak

Suggestions that All Black coach Graham Henry and his coaching colleagues should be put up against a wall and summarily dispatched on the back of two successive defeats in South Africa by the world champions are bizarre.

So they lost two games and they may well not win this season's Tri-Nations. This hardly represents a hanging offence.

How can Henry's record of the last few years be dished in the light of just two defeats? Tri-Nations champions four years running, Grand Slams achieved in the Northern Hemisphere. Coach of the year, sports team of the year ... you name it, New Zealand have won it under Henry, with a single exception - the World Cup.

Three defeats this season don't change the critical, underlying points here which so many people fail to understand. If someone has to be the scapegoat for a hitherto disappointing test match season for the All Blacks, ought we not to question two other groups before taking aim at the coaching staff? How about the players and, if appropriate, those in administration who appointed Henry and his pals standing up and sharing some of the flak?

Since professionalism arrived in the game, it seems that it was only a question of time before money diluted the All Black ethos.

It is human nature to aspire to greater rewards, better perks and all the trappings that go with privileged positions. When the game was amateur was it any wonder we saw a purer sporting creature.

But that was then and this is now. And whatever part professionalism has played in diminishing the deep-down hunger of players to honour the All Black jersey, manifestly other aspects are at play.

Was Henry a lousy coach last year or the year before when the All Blacks were slaying everyone in sight in world rugby? Very few suggested as much. Furthermore, is it Henry's fault that problems were emerging a while ago on the production line?

Take halfback. Where once performed, slickly and brilliantly, the likes of Chris Laidlaw, Syd Going, Dave Loveridge and Justin Marshall, now stand Brendon Leonard, Piri Weepu and Andrew Ellis.

I'm not aware that Henry has stunted the growth of New Zealand locks from being world-class operators. But might not the fact that players such as Chris Jack, who would normally have remained in provincial rugby once their test days were done to offer their expertise to the next generation, instead left abruptly be part of the reason for an apparent dearth. It's not Henry's fault that the world's best tighthead prop is playing in the Northern Hemisphere or New Zealand's best halfback is now strutting his stuff in France with Stade Toulouse.

And even if you're so one-sided and believe that all this can be dumped at the door of the All Black coach and his assistants, he can't be blamed for his own reappointment. He didn't make the decision. So if anyone merits being flung in the dock of the New Zealand rugby court it must be those who reappointed Henry.

He hasn't become a bad coach overnight. However, there is evidence certain players have slipped considerably below their previous standards. There is every reason to believe this will continue to be a lean year for the All Blacks.

But of all the coaches available, you couldn't have a better master at the wheel.

Peter Bills is a rugby writer for Independent News & Media in London