Richard Loe: Give Henry the All Blacks job but no free ticket to Cup

I think it's fair enough that Graham Henry be re-appointed but it should only be a year-by-year thing.

He's put his hand up to do two more years as All Black coach, which would obviously take us through to the RWC 2011, and he would become the only All Black head coach so far to coach through two World Cups.

I was a Robbie Deans man. I thought he should have got the job after the 2007 World Cup but, now that he and other candidates for the job have gone, you'd have to be practical and say there are no other candidates for Henry's job anyway.

I don't even think it's necessary to have an election this year.

The only other contenders would be Ian Foster of the Chiefs and Colin Cooper of the Hurricanes and I don't think either would bring much to the job that isn't already there.

Of course, Henry could have moved over and let Steve Hansen in but, let's face it, not much would change, if anything. The ship would be the same, just a different hand on the tiller.

So I'd say re-appoint him for a year but don't give him a free ticket to the World Cup just yet.

The reason for that is that they could have a nightmare season this year, for all we know. Two years out is too long to be given carte blanche.

The last time Henry was given too much room to move, we got rotation, rehabilitation, re-conditioning and all those other discredited things which gave us the worst World Cup result we have ever had.

It's a moot point whether much would change if Henry did have a bad year and got the boot in 2010. Some would say a year out from the World Cup is too close for big changes like that.

But you'd think that, if things went wrong this year, that the NZRU would give Hansen, Wayne Smith and whoever joined the panel at that stage a brief on how they want things done and then let them get on with it.

I doubt Henry will have a poor season this year - he has done pretty much everything asked of him since the last World Cup - and he has tidied up those discredited theories which cost us so dearly last time. But you never know.

You also never know whether, if there is a poor winter ahead of us, it will be judged to be the coach's fault if anything goes wrong or whether it is a by-product of other issues. I mean the player drain, the injuries that have hit Super rugby sides and the lack of depth in key positions like first five-eighths and openside flanker.

So, for all those reasons, I say give Henry the job - but review it annually.

If he does go through to the RWC and wins, it will be one of the great comebacks. I don't hold with anyone who might say that the All Blacks can only win the World Cup at home ... that's nonsense.

The World Cup has been held six times and the hosts have won it only twice. Teams have a long time to acclimatise and to build up strategy, tactics and form and I think this whole home-and-away thing is bullshit.

Henry, if he gets through to and wins the RWC 2011, will be remembered for that, I think, and not the stuff-ups of 2007.