Peter Jackson column: Graham Henry was right, Wales: Start using your brains!

In the relentless search for a psychological edge, Wales could have done worse than given their backs a jolting reminder of what one Kiwi thinks of their attacking game. The answer, from the gospel according to Graham Henry, is not much – not much at all.
Now, in those low-tech days between the demise of the carrier pigeon and the advent of the email, critical third-party comments would be pinned to the dressing-room notice board, the proverbial red rag to a herd of bulls.
Henry had some caustic things to say on Wales' creative capacity or, more pertinently, the lack of it, a subject of occasional concern in this column during the last 12 months. ‘The Great Redeemer' went so far as to question Welsh intelligence.
“There are guys trying to use their brawn rather than their brain,'' Henry said in an interview on BBC Radio Wales. “George North is as good a winger as any in the world, Dan Biggar is a fabulous ten but the attack game…. how do they score tries?
“Well, they've got the players. The Welsh defence is very good, they have world-class goalkickers but the attack has been a bit questionable.
“I don't want to be critical but in the Australia game (during the World Cup) they (the Wallabies) were down to 13 players, Wales attacked for a long time, had numbers but didn't use them.
“So I wonder about the intelligence of the attacking game on the field. So I guess that's the next step forward.''
Those all too aware of how Wales suffered the last time they went to Dublin under Henry's command, almost exactly 14 years ago, have probably only just stopped questioning a plan so void of intelligence that Ireland won by a landslide (54-10). Henry promptly gave it up as a bad job and resigned.
Back in the here-and-now, Warren Gatland and his coaches are never slow to let it be known that they are their own most severe critics, in which event no stone will have been left unturned in the endless quest for improvement.
Henry, of course, has a point.
While he may not have told them anything they didn't already know, his choice of words will have stung. If they goad Wales into lighting a fire behind the scrum starting in Dublin this afternoon, then Henry will have ample reason to claim some credit for constructive criticism.
Those in his sights will see today's opener against Ireland as the perfect opportunity to ram the words back down his throat. Wales have been scoring far too few tries against the nine other top ten-ranked countries for far too long.
Their last visit to Dublin two years ago proved a painful example, an occasion when Rhys Priestland, labouring under explicit instructions, kicked the ball almost as often as his opposite number, Johnny Sexton.
Wales, beaten 26-3, refused the last resort of a Plan B offered by James Hook's presence on the bench where he sat to the bitter end. Now, according to their most feared threequarter of all, the tournament favourites intend using the full width of the pitch for their assault on the Irish.
North said: “Wales want to play a quick game and an open game and that suits me down to the ground.''
Music to the ears of those of us concerned about Wales' safety-first predictability. In revealing his country's wider ambitions, North made an equally revealing complaint about Northampton using him as a battering-ram under orders to “carry the ball into a wall”.
Clearly, it wasn't serious enough to dissuade North from extending his stay at Franklin's Gardens beyond the end of the season. There were no such issues last season when the Saints were sweeping all before them and their Welsh import ran tries in all over the place. A below-par World Cup, as measured against his own towering standard, left no doubt that North has still to find a way back to where he was before a series of knock-out blows raised serious concerns over his long-term health.
The part of Henry's blast which will have hurt most was his double questioning of the collective Welsh brain box behind the scrum and his reference to ‘intelligence', as in a lack of it.
In that context, North has to carry part of the can. On the one occasion against Australia when Wales managed to make their two-man advantage count, when they outflanked them on the right and gave North a clear sight of the corner flag, he cut back inside, trading space for contact.
In their hermetically-sealed bunker in the Vale of Glamorgan, the Welsh 23 will have been oblivious to the doom and gloom across the Irish Sea over the depleted state of the champions.
As far as the visitors are concerned, Ireland are favourites this afternoon because Gatland says so, even if it's nothing more than the usual codology. The fact that Ireland's very own Kiwi, Joe Schmidt, thinks Ireland will finish third sounds all part of the same old game.
Wales ought to win for a number of reasons.
Because they have lost fewer players (Leigh Halfpenny, Liam Williams and Rhys Webb against Tommy Bowe, Luke Fitzgerald, Cian Healy, Mike Ross, Iain Henderson and Peter O'Mahony).
Because Ireland's loss of the retired Paul O'Connell remains, as yet, incalculable and because their players have always started the Six Nations in recent years from a position of strength provided by their three major provinces forming part of Europe's elite.
In recent weeks they have all fallen by the wayside, like selling-platers at a Grand National. That has been happening to the Welsh regions as a matter of course for so long now that the national team probably wouldn't prefer to have it any other way.
It hasn't stopped them winning Grand Slams twice under Gatland, in 2008 and again four years later. And on each occasion the journey began where it begins this afternoon, by the banks of the Liffey…