KEY POINTS:
It is not unusual to be chided by All Black coaches. The censure is usually during the test season as the supremos let off steam.
But this is a peculiar season and a gentle reproach came this week from Graham Henry as he advanced the idea that I might like to look at the new talent in the Super 14 rather than decry the absence of the All Black conditioning squad.
Here goes then.
Stephen Brett suggests he will continue the world-class sequence of first five-eighths from Canterbury, Serge Lilo is a livewire flanker and David Smith is an excitement machine on the wing for the Hurricanes.
There you go Ted. How's that?
I'd better stop there because I recall another of your complaints: that the media hypes new players too quickly.
So let's get back to those All Black probables excused from Super 14 duty, who are more than halfway through their conditioning programme.
While they have been elsewhere the quality of the Super 14 has slipped. We are told the protected 22 have made huge gains in their conditioning, they were showing enormous benefits away from matchplay for three months. The investment in this group has been so significant that it will be astonishing if all 22, injuries allowing, are not headed for World Cup duty.
Assistant coach Wayne Smith hinted at that this week when he said the selectors put most emphasis on the form players showed in the later stages of the Super 14. That just happens to be when the 22 are drip-fed into action to help those who have been toiling in their absence.
The national panel have been loyal to their incumbent players and the only area of World Cup uncertainty seems to be lock/blindside flanker. That makes Reuben Thorne and Jason Eaton vulnerable to challenges from Keith Robinson, Troy Flavell and James Ryan.
Across the Ditch, former Brumbies and Wallaby coach Eddie Jones has questioned the use-by dates of several of his old mates. "Fighting Harada" is now coaching the Reds, who play the Brumbies tomorrow, and he has questioned whether George Gregan and Stephen Larkham are near the end of their careers and whether Stirling Mortlock had recovered from his concussion.
It smells of a get-square from Jones, after murmurs that three senior Brumbies played a role in persuading the Australian Rugby Union in 2005 that Jones had to be sacked. Ringside tonight in Brisbane could be a beauty.
