Henry’s All Blacks: The 2007 World Cup Campaign

Deaks analyses the man, the team and the moment in his new book

Henry’s All Blacks: The 2007 World Cup Campaign by Murray Deaker with John Deaker

After coaching the Welsh and the Lions he was nicknamed ‘The Redeemer’but for the 2007 Rugby World Cup New Zealanders demanded more. We needed him to be ‘The Messiah’. Graham Henry was given everything he asked for – so what went wrong?

“I don’t set out to be controversial. All I try and do is call it the way I see it,” says Murray Deaker, affectionately known to his many fans as Deaks. He’s a renowned talkback host and the frontman for Sky Television’s Deaker on Sport – still the only national television sports programme to carry the host’s name.

An award-winning and highly respected sports commentator Deaker has an opinion on everything and a particular passion for rugby. It’s a game he played for 25 years, including briefly at provincial level for Otago. Also a coach for 15 years he’s been analysing the game and talking about rugby for the past two decades.

When Graham Henry replaced John Mitchell as coach for the All Blacks his job description would have been simple: win the 2007 Rugby World Cup. That an ex-school teacher, who had never played rugby at international level, ever came to be in this position is unusual. Would rotation and conditioning, two of the more controversial aspects of Henry’s programme prove to be our saving grace? Or sink our chances? We now know the answer. How he planned, and finally failed to execute, the four-year campaign to bring home the William Webb Ellis Trophy is a fascinating story.

In his new book, Henry’s All Blacks, the make-or-break campaign for the 2007 Rugby World Cup is dissected and analysed by a man who knows his rugby, knows the history, and more importantly knows the man. For more than forty years, Deaker has respected Henry as a friend and colleague, but even that long friendship was challenged in the dark days of doubt leading into the 2007 tournament. Deaker’s in-depth examination provides a thoughtful, and provocative, record of a shattering defeat.

One thing his audience can always rely on is Deaker’s commitment to telling it straight. This book is no exception.

ENDS

© Scoop Media