Graham Henry speaks to The New Zealand Herald's Wynne Gray about the challenge facing the All Blacks as hosts of next year's Rugby World Cup.
In a wide-ranging interview, the All Black coach reveals that two of his biggest worries are the scrum and the lack of player depth in New Zealand. This year was both a separate season and formative steps for the seventh World Cup.
"If we just put all our focus on the World Cup, I think we would fall over and be highly embarrassed," Henry said. "I think we just need to get better at what we are doing through each of these campaigns and if we do that, we are going to have a good foundation for the World Cup."
This season the All Blacks coaches have visited each franchise several times, swapped information, ideas and plans with the staff and spoken to players.
"We started that this year so we could perfect it for next season. But will that be sufficient? That is the challenge because we have five weeks of contact in 2011 with the All Blacks rugby team as a group before we play the Rugby World Cup. In contrast, the European teams will play Six Nations, then have a break and through May, June, July they will prime themselves for World Cup. So it is quite a different build-up. For the Southern Hemisphere sides it is a lot more challenging."
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