KEY POINTS:
When Graham Henry had to reapply for his job of All Black coach his prospects seemed bleak.
By inviting applications, the Rugby Union board was implicitly hoping for something better, as it would after a World Cup debacle.
To reappoint Henry would suggest a better candidate could not be found, hardly a ringing declaration of confidence in him.
But that is not the way it has turned out. The board had a splendid alternative in Robbie Deans. The Canterbury and Crusaders coach has a record without equal in the Super 14, consistently building champion teams of hard, accurate efficiency who simply do not contemplate defeat.
Deans' record demands he be given the All Blacks sooner or later, and now it will be later.
The NZRU has defied most predictions - and all previous instinct - by reappointing a coach who failed to win the World Cup. Henry has been given a chance to rebuild the team that stumbled in the quarter-final this year and New Zealand rugby has been given a chance to learn from defeat.
Henry and his assistants, who stood for reappointment together, will have a better idea than anyone of what went wrong with this year's campaign.
The least Henry should do now is give the public a more candid account of the failure and exactly how he thinks he can do better. Plainly he has convinced the appointment panel that he has those answers and ought to share them with a disappointed country that has accepted its disappointment this year with considerable generosity to him.
Over the next two seasons we hope to see a team - a settled team - resume winning in the style Henry produced before the momentum was lost this year.
He has much more to offer and now he can.
