KEY POINTS:
I once worked with a news editor who responded with the following when a reporter, leaving the newspaper, asked for a written reference: "[Reporter's name] is a lazy reporter."
When said reporter protested at this perspective, the news editor sighed, grabbed back the offending piece of paper and
handwrote - between the words 'is' and 'a' - the word 'not'.
I was reminded of this with last week's item about Murray Deaker's upcoming book on the 2007 Rugby World Cup. Called Henry's All Blacks, the cover mistakenly released by the publisher was sub-titled: How The 2007 World Cup Was Won.
This was A Good Joke as the All Blacks have not - unless I have missed something - won the World Cup yet and some of us are feeling distinctly uncomfortable about bold predictions made before the tournament when our sense of In Henry We Trust was at its peak.
It's an old trick in publishing. You either write 'timelessly' (so that whatever you write is unaffected by upcoming or unforeseen events) or you write the book in an open-ended style and leave a chapter or two at the end to wrap events up.
The problem this book faces is that it does not appear to be timeless. Its very cover, tone and style will presumably be affected if Henry's All Blacks do not, in point of fact, win the Cup.
In which case, one would rather expect the environment into which this book is released to be rather different. This is, remember, the country which was so affected by our 1999 World Cup downfall that death threats were issued and people generally behaved disgracefully towards the team and none copped it more than coach John Hart.
Henry may well attract the same level of opprobrium if the 2007 All Blacks fail. The unplanned pre-release of the book also made public the rather cynical manipulation by publishers - where they are happy to splat a pre-prepared, alternative cover on the book, make final adjustments and then plonk it on the shelves just in time for Christmas or whatever. Quite what readers might think of such an approach is not known.
For what it's worth, I still think the All Blacks will win and Deaker's cover will stand. But my belief was shaken by that performance against Scotland and the fact that Henry is still employing his 'strategy'. This column was written before last night's Romania match but that's because it will have little significance in the All Blacks' preparation. Unless more get injured.
What rocked me against Scotland was that the All Blacks did a sensible thing. Instead of rocketing the ball wide willy-nilly and counter-attacking from down the road and round the corner, they chose to structure their play. They kept it reasonably tight. They played rather like they did in the final Tri Nations test against Australia - pick & go here, lineout drives there; they attacked mostly down the inside channels, the blindside and generally around 10-15m out from the ruck.
The benefit of this approach was that it took them to where the Scots' defence was strongest; it gave them the physical test they had been looking for. It was back to basics, giving nothing away - except a hint of how they might play against Australia, for example. It would have proved nothing and developed nothing to have flung it wide and let Doug Howlett and Sitiveni Sivivatu (provided he actually caught the ball, of course) zoom around scoring tries all over the shop.
But the execution... the handling errors and the decision-making were loudly redolent of the calls for consistent combinations and fine tuning made consistently by judges like Sean Fitzpatrick and John Drake, World Cup winners no less.
Henry has stuck to his guns in terms of developing depth and rotating it. You cannot fault him for consistency. It's just that efforts like Scotland induce a spot of dicky ticker in those of us not imbued with the same Messianic surety.
The worry, you see, is that the All Blacks will know full well that what they produced against Scotland was about as effective as trying to cook a haggis when it's still inside the sheep. Such stumbles can produce small tears, potentially leading to large rips, in the psyche of sportsmen.
Back in 1991, I wrote a book called Brothers In Arms - the story of the Whetton twins. It was published before the 1991 World Cup and sold well, right up until that day when some bloke called Campese put the All Blacks out of the tournament.
The book dived into the bargain bins faster than Doug Howlett on a loose ball over the line.
I had a mental picture of Deaker's book if the unthinkable happens, with a harassed editing staff scratching through the text, furiously handwriting in the word 'not' everywhere, just like the droll news editor mentioned above.
But you'd think a book sub-titled How The 2007 World Cup Was Not Won might struggle to attract readership. Especially if it's 24 chapters of 'Hallelujah' and one chapter of 'Armageddon'.
