KEY POINTS:
It's late in the Rugby World Cup semifinal and the All Blacks are going badly. The coaches, watching from their box in the stands, desperately need to change the game plan.
Coach Graham Henry mutters a few words into his radio, which are picked up by coaching staff on the sideline, who relay the message to the players on the field.
The team respond, turn things around and march to victory - unless the opposing team intercept the message and counter it.
This is the thinking behind the All Blacks' new secret weapon. Digital radio technology will encrypt messages between the coaching staff during World Cup games to ensure no one eavesdrops on team strategy.
Such forms of communication are usually the norm for secret agents and spies, but the stakes are similarly high, it seems, when it comes to rugby's ultimate prize.
All Blacks communications will be via portable radios supplied by Christchurch company Tait Electronics, which also services police in New Zealand, Canada, the US and Brazil.
The TP9100 radios will be a vital link between coaching staff - including coaches, the manager and the team doctor - who are spread between the stands, the sidelines and the changing rooms during a match.
"There's information that's sensitive enough that it could alter the course of the match if other people had it, so the encryption capability is a critical factor," said All Blacks manager Darren Shand.
"On any given match day, secure, instant and clear communications could make the difference between winning and losing."
As well as providing a secure line, they filter out unwanted background noise, which poses an increasing problem as stadiums become bigger.
The radio technology - used by Emirates Team New Zealand in Valencia - was trialled by the All Blacks in a game against South Africa in the Tri-Nations this year.
"And they were sufficiently impressed to take it on for the World Cup," said Graham Rippon, project manager for Tait digital terminals.
"The speech gets digitised, and then you can scramble the digits to get a sophisticated encryption for secure communications that is virtually impossible to decode.
"The speech gets changed to a series of 0s and 1s which then goes through a processor that rearranges them and makes it totally unintelligible.
"Essentially, the level of security meets top world-wide security clearance - top-secret military information could quite comfortably be transmitted with this encryption."
The All Blacks use the radios for all kinds of messages including game tactics, substitutions, replacing ripped jerseys, or readying a stretcher.
All Blacks doctor Deb Robinson uses the radio with an earpiece so she can easily pace the sidelines or run on to the field to attend an injured player.
"In top-level rugby everything happens very, very quickly for us, and for the players on the field," she said.
Tait managing director Michael Chick said the radios provided crystal-clear communications while being durable.
"We like to think that the world's best radios are being used by the world's best rugby team."
