Psst...Graham Henry and Co

Memo to Graham Henry and co. Too often you seem to select players that you think will fit into your system or playing style you are trying to adopt rather than just selecting the best performing player in that position and this may be part of your undoing. I call it the 'select and hope' policy you seem to have adopted.

In some ways it may have clouded your judgement when making selections. You are, in other words, over thinking it. You have comitted to a certain playing style for example and are then trying to find the right players to make it work. This is a somewhat flawed approach IMO because the opportunity cost is that you may have to trial more players to find the right fit and/or have players playing out of their preferred postion to make it fit. For example, you may be looking for players that are comfortable under the high ball to suit your game plan but at the same excluding a player that is a try scoring, specialist right winger.

It’s an outside in approach rather than an inside out approach and that's what bothers me. Wayne Shelford summed it up best when he said ‘they are just doing their job’ (click on title 'Psst...Graham Henry and Co' for the interview) in an interview many years ago. Keep it simple by just selecting players in their preferred positions, have faith in them and make sure they are doing the basics better than anyone else ie ‘doing their jobs’ and the rest will take it of itself.