New Zealand ready to party as Henry's first selection gets a mixed reaction

RUGBY WORLD CUP: New Zealand v TongaEVER SINCE November 17th, 2005, New Zealand has set about putting its best foot forward in hosting the world's biggest sports tournament of the year.

In a country where rugby is the national sport (or should that be religion?), rugby-free zones appear virtually non-existent and City Council organisers were anticipating around 50,000 people would attend “the biggest party Auckland has ever seen” to mark the eagerly-awaited opening night of the 2011 Rugby World Cup.

The party will begin at around 4pm on the wharf and elsewhere along the waterfront, and is officially set to end at 2am, with all but a few of the 60,000 capacity Eden Park sold out for the opening game between New Zealand and Tonga. Security officials will limit the attendance on the wharf itself to 12,000 and the highlight of the many events being held is a sound and light show in conjunction with the opening ceremony which organisers claim will dwarf the Millennium fireworks in the city.

A dress rehearsal for the 30-minute opening ceremony was held for family and friends in Eden Park on Wednesday night, which will start with a powerful waita, and featuring light shows, land yachts circling the ground and a booming haka.

If ever someone deserves a holiday after this World Cup it is the laidback New Zealand 2011 CEO Martin Snedden, who seems to remain the coolest customer around hereabouts and has consistently deflected remorseless media negativity and some harrowing setbacks with his customary charm and dry wit.

“It’s been a pretty tough 12 months or so in New Zealand with what’s happened in Christchurch and Pike River,” he said in reference to the earthquake and mining disaster which have tragically afflicted this country.

“The country is ready to have fun. I think we’re ready to have a party.”

The bar had been set very high, Snedden acknowledged, especially in France four years ago, and the IRB president Bernard Lapasset concurred with Snedden’s view that everything is in place to have “a magnificent tournament”, after launching the Rugby World Cup Christchurch Appeal, which will be led by Richie McCaw to help rebuild the rugby community there.

The worst of the weekend rain is set to arrive after the first night, and all that then remains is for the All Blacks to kick off proceedings in some style.

But already there’s been a decidedly mixed reaction to Graham Henry’s first selection.

Each day the New Zealand Herald runs a Cup Shorts’ Choke-o-Meter, and yesterday it ran a picture of the All Blacks coach halfway along the thermometer, between “cough, cough” and “getting tense” and interpreted his earlier comments about playing “a nucleus of players pretty often” as, translated: “After a decade in charge of the All Blacks I still have no idea who’s in the first XV.”

At the end of the choke-o-meter hangs a rope with a noose at the end of it, and lest anyone is in any doubt as to who the noose is intended for, Henry is pictured on the same page in sixth place on New Zealand’s Public Enemy List, albeit with the word ‘pending’ stamped above his forehead.

For the time being Quade Cooper occupies first place.

Certainly Henry has created something of a noose for himself by pairing Sonny Bill Williams and Ma’a Nonu together for only the second time (Nonu only having played at outside centre four times before for the All Blacks), and even more pertinently in opting for a new-look back three.

Whatever about promoting Israel Dagg above Mils Muliaina for the opening game, the selection of two converted wingers in Richard Kahui and Isaia Toevea – ahead of specialist wingers Corey Jane and Zac Gulldford – has compounding the much debated omission of Hosea Gear from the original squad.

The aforementioned reference to retaining a nucleus of players throughout the tournament has been widely welcomed, though, as a response to the much derided rotation policy for the last World Cup. ‘Rotation’ is possibly the dirtiest word in the New Zealand rugby lexicon but it could be that the All Blacks are in danger of flipping from one extreme to the other.

Retaining a nucleus of players runs the risk of injuries to key players and of back-up players coming in cold in a crisis later on, not to mention failing to maximise their squad.

For if the All Blacks can’t employ all 30 players in a group containing France, Tonga, Canada and Japan, then they really may as well give up the ghost.

Rotation didn’t account for Dan Carter going off injured in the Cardiff quarter-final against France four years ago, nor the officials missing the most blatant of forward passes in the build-up to Yannick Jauzion’s try, nor even Henry’s flawed decision to leave the experience of Aaron Mauger and Doug Howlett in the stands.

Nor, most importantly, did it explain why the All Blacks abandoned their high tempo, wide game of the preceding four years ago to instead retain the pick-and-go tactics they used to run down the clock for the 10 minutes Luke McAlister was yellow carded.

But you wouldn’t envy Henry or the rest of them if they don’t win this thing.