Henry takes the strain

Graham Henry has confessed to taking a little extra stress in his role as All Black coach this week as he faces a match that could have a major bearing on his future in the role after this year.

Graham Henry has confessed to taking a little extra stress in his role as All Black coach this week as he faces a match that could have a major bearing on his future in the role after this year.

A double-loss to Australia will surely end the team's Tri-nations aspirations, and would be the first time New Zealand had lost three in a row in ten years.

Speaking at the conference at which he finalised his line-up, including injury doubts Jimmy Cowan and Anderw Hore, Henry was asked some candid questions about his private 'battle' against the pretender to his position, Robbie Deans, who many think ought to be doing his job currently.

“(It's) another very important Test, obviously,” Henry said.

“But when you lose a couple, it puts some extra emphasis on this particular Test and that's pretty obvious.

“Since the involvement of this group of coaches, we've only lost once two Test matches in a row, so that puts a bit of extra edge on it, a bit of extra stress.

“There's always a lot of tension every Test match that you're involved in … particularly the big ones.

“That's the way it should be. I think most people would go through that tension.”

Henry also reminded his detractors that there was no chance of the All Blacks slacking through demoralisation, nor through the weight of the criticism heaped upon his team this week.

“We're very focused to do the best job we can. I think people are doing that. The team's doing that and that's all we can do,” he said.

“We've just got to make sure that we remain focused on doing that and don't get our attention on other things that don't matter.

“As to whether we're going to be good enough. We can't do any more than we're doing.

“We've put in place some policies which we think will work, and worked at those particularly hard and I think the guys feel good about that.

“Once you've made those decisions and get them into practice, that's a great help. So we made those decisions early.”