THERE is no telling how long it will last, but for the moment Graham Henry is full of the joys of winter. The enduring images of his reign in the northern hemisphere are of a cornered, baited bear, but here in his homeland, amid the pressure, expectation and all that scary stuff that makes failure so much the wrong option in New Zealand rugby, he is happy to talk the game and crack jokes.
In yesterday’s announcement of the All Blacks team to face the Lions on Saturday in the first international match, Henry managed to take his listeners on a whopping diversion to make a reference to the success of the Auckland team he coached. “I thought I’d just mention that,” he said. “Makes me feel better.”
He also made passing reference to the madness of Sir Clive Woodward. And when asked if he was surprised about the omission of Gavin Henson from the Lions team, he said: “I think we’ve got a major problem picking our side. I would hate to try and pick Clive’s.”
Now this hardly qualifies Henry for a role on the Kiwi comedy circuit, but it is indicative of a man at ease with himself. All Blacks rugby is such a serious business that, in times past, it has appeared to have legislated out the concept of levity. Henry, however, has reintroduced it and in so doing he seems unrecognisable from the distant, grizzled figure that resigned and made haste from Wales more than three years ago.
It takes a considerable rewinding of rugby history to recall that the dry, composed demeanour with which he fronts the All Blacks was the same that he presented on his overblown arrival as the “Great Redeemer” of Wales. What Wales and his infamous so-near-yet-so-far stint with the previous pride of Lions shows is how completely a job that drives emotions as much as his can chew a man up.
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Yet he was happy to come back for more. He had, by his admission, been dreaming of coaching his country for 30 years; he has been doing so for 18 months and the smile remains. What do people think? “The jury’s still out,” one punter who pitched up to watch the All Blacks’ public training session on Monday said. “We’d like to see Andrew Mehrtens in the mix, but we’re Cantabrians (from Canterbury) so we would say that,” another said. “We’re pleased with the improved PR,” a third added. “A public session like this wouldn’t have happened before.”
In fact, it would. The comment merely reinforces the impression that the former regime, under John Mitchell, represented the days of darkness and that when Henry arrived, the sun came out. The New Zealand public have a real sense of ownership of the national team and by making his All Blacks more accessible, Henry gave the team back to the people. As one Kiwi journalist observed: “The difference is that Henry has some PR, whereas Mitchell had none.”
The idea that Henry represents the cheery face of the sport here may come as a surprise to Britons, especially those on the dragon-hearted side of the divide, but Henry has said repeatedly how much he learnt from his experiences as Wales and Lions coach. Man-management has long been his perceived weakness, a point that he has recognised in recent interviews.
Of the Lions’ series defeat in Australia four years ago, he said: “I wanted to win that series so badly, I forgot about other things that are important, like the relationships between coach and player.” Indeed, he was burnt so badly by that experience that he confessed: “I shouldn’t have done the Lions. If I had my time again I’d think very seriously about not doing it. It was a huge learning curve and I got it wrong.”
Which leads to the following self-analysis: “I think you change your style. The Welsh experience was huge. I was very much a cup-winning coach, now I am more of a people coach.”
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His recruitment of his coaching staff has been done wisely and has met with public approval. Henry is far less unilateral than he was in Wales, he lets Steve Hansen and Wayne Smith, his assistants, share the public face of the All Blacks’ management team and the result is that he lightens some of the burden from his shoulders.
The question is, how long the sunny demeanour remains. He has lost only two internationals as coach — neither of those at home — and he has a magnificent, thundering victory over France as his principal achievement. None of that, though, will count for much were the Lions to win the coming series.
That Henry has coached the Lions and now coaches against them is a quirk of history unlikely to be repeated. He sees it as “bizarre and unusual” but does not like to dwell on the deeper significance of it all. The fact is, though, that Lions rugby has defined his past as a coach, has hugely influenced the present and will say a lot about his future. “The jury’s still out,” they say. And they will not be saying that in three weekends’ time.