KEY POINTS:
Win or lose the All Blacks job, Graham Henry said he'd give me an interview. "I might be a dead duck by then," he warned.
That was all right, I said, we were as interested in a dead duck as a live one.
As it turned out - cue much baying from most sports writers - the duck lives, so here we are, in a hotel room with a relaxed Henry in his long shorts and bare feet. He has kicked off his sandals (manly ones, I hasten to add). I ask if he thinks he's on his holidays, for heaven's sake.
He gives me that Henry look: a little grump, a little smirk. I am to give him a break because he's had a very tough couple of months and it's very good of him, isn't it, to have said he'd talk to me, win or lose?
I am hardly likely to disagree. I have interviewed him before and, although he denies he is bossy, all I can say is I don't know how those All Blacks dared not to win the World Cup.
I had phoned him directly and he said "yes". But he later asked, very politely, if I'd mind also ringing the media manager because "I've been naughty" and he was going to "play the game" from now on. The media manager seemed to think this was amusing and told me Henry was "playing by the rules" in a way which indicated he didn't expect it to last.
Henry says he was always supposed to go about interviews this way, but that he always thought it an imposition to have the media ring some other bloke to make an appointment. I was interested in this and in his naughtiness and said "good luck to anyone trying to manage you".
But he said he wasn't making a big deal or a "negative" of it, and I wasn't to, either.
"What is the objective of this interview?" he says, strictly, once we're in the room. I could have said, "to ascertain the mood of the duck", but, from past experience, I know you have to warm Henry up a bit. So I know, too, that mentioning too soon the picture somebody sent me after that Cardiff game of a coffee mug with the Graham Henry doll on top, and "Rugby World Cup" stuck to the side, might not be wise. But barefoot, Henry is somehow less intimidating, so I will, later and a trifle tentatively, ask whether he might find this just a little bit funny.
"I think," he says, "that's very supportive." You will have to imagine for yourselves that mouth just-twitching-at-the-corners look he has perfected. I demonstrated this piece of sarcasm with my Henry doll, which he had already snorted at: "I'm sure I've got more hair than that."
He was going to the rugby awards the evening we spoke and I don't know about these things so, idiotically, asked if there was a Coach of the Year award. There was, he said. "Who's going to get that?" I asked. This earned another snort. "It certainly won't be me," he said. "Would he like me to make him an award, using a coffee mug?" "That would be very nice," he said, sardonically, of course.
What is the objective of this interview? I can hear him saying, again, at this point in the writing of it.
He was a teacher and then a headmaster so he has seen his share of tomfoolery. It is also possible that a bit of light relief comes as some relief.
When I phoned after he had retained his job to say "congratulations", he muttered a thank you. "Don't get carried away," I said. "Well, you know, it's been hard work for the last two months," he said.
I ask now whether he was happy and he said, "yeah". "Because you're very good at showing you're happy, aren't you?"
"Ha, ha, ha."
He doesn't do hyperbole. He says he thought the interview with the board hadn't gone "particularly well" and that he was a dead duck. "Oh, for sure." He went home and told his wife, "I think we'll be looking for another job." He didn't sleep well - he hardly ever does and gets up at ungodly hours of the morning to start working - but "I slept very poorly that night. So if everybody thought it was a done deal, they should have let me know 'cos I certainly had a horrendous time".
The done deal. I ask if it's a problem there is that perception. "That's absolute nonsense," he says.
I said of course he'd say that, but that wasn't the question which, as he well knew, was about perception. He didn't quite answer that either, but said how nice and supportive people had been, how the polls have been supportive and so on.
"And so I don't think what's being said in, I'd say the majority of the media, is reflecting public opinion."
He has been taking a hell of a knocking in the media, which you'd think must have some effect, but he says, "I've not read a one." What, never? "If we win by 100 points to nil I might read that article. Look, I've been through these sorts of things before and I think it's important to have a system, if you like. And my way of handling it is: I don't read, listen or look at the media." Which doesn't stop other helpful people telling him? "I've got a mother still alive at 91. She tells me what's going on. I say, 'Why don't you just turn that off, Mother?' Or, 'Why do you read that? You don't need it.' So it affects people close to you and they tell you."
He is, obviously, not impervious to hurt. Nobody is, not even a tough old rugby boot like him, but he can't see any point in commenting - that would just be more grist to that mill.
He says he put off watching the recorded Cardiff match for three weeks, until he had to watch it for the review of the World Cup.
"It made me feel physically ill watching it, quite frankly."
That is frank enough, so I felt I could ask if he cried after that game. "Ha!" Is that not a manly sort of question? "Oh, I suppose it's a fair question. But what I don't want to do here, Michele, is start grizzling about the game. I'm just trying to be general and I've done that right through ... " So, he did cry, just a little bit? Because people do. "I'm just trying to explain. Where was I? Before I was interrupted."
OH dear, I think, now I've done it. He's going to go grumpy (when I told somebody that he gets up at those ungodly hours, they said "no wonder he's so grumpy".) But he didn't. He went on to talk about meeting his family the day after the match and "so that was pretty emotional. Yeah, that was probably getting there".
I suppose those rugby lunatics from Canterbury - the ones who have threatened to switch allegiance to the Aussies - will now say that not only did he not bring home the cup, but that he's a sissy as well. Honestly, what a peculiar job he has. Why would anyone want it? I've put this to him before - and he looked at me then as if I was mad - let alone want it again.
All that baying and calling for him to say sorry, it's a sort of madness. He says he thinks you need "a touch of madness" to do the job. He has never seen a therapist. "No. Do you think I should?"
He says, by the way, that he has said sorry to the nation. "I've said it several times." I thought he might only have said "mistake".
"Same thing, isn't it? I have said sorry. At the press conference once reappointed. After the game."
If I was him, I'd tell me to shut up about now, or at least mutter something about it being time to move on, which would be a very coachy thing to say. "Yeah, but I'm here because you asked me and I'm trying to be a decent guy. It's very difficult for me." You had to watch for the corners of the mouth twitching on the delivery of that one.
He was very decent and good-natured. He wouldn't tell me whether he had had either a pay rise or a pay cut, but he wasn't too grouchy about being asked. He did say - he can't help being a headmaster - that he was "hopeful [this] interview would be positive. That would be a nice change. I don't have to talk to you, you know, so I hope it's not another of those negatives."
But how will he know, when he doesn't read what's written about him? "I probably will, Michele."
This, I'm pretty sure, is meant to be a compliment, not a threat. But thanks very much, Mr Henry, I will now spend my weekend in the state last experienced while waiting outside another headmaster's office. But I don't think he can complain. I have no idea whether he's the right man for the job, but he's a decent duck.
