When Wales are awarded their first penalty against New Zealand on Saturday, watch out for Neil Jenkins, the kicking coach, bringing out the tee on which the ball is placed.

Jenkins will then stand behind the kicker, sometimes only a few feet away, watching closely as the ball flies towards its target before picking up the tee and leaving the field.

Is there anything wrong with this? Someone has to carry the tee on to the pitch. What is wrong is that it is Jenkins who feels the need to be on the pitch, there for last-minute encouragement, a calming of nerves. He is almost the only kicking coach at the highest level of the game who does this.

Does anyone else feel that it is slightly demeaning to see Jenkins peering over the shoulder of one of his pupils, much like that golf caddie who used to get down almost flat on the ground to line up a putt for his player?

It smacks of a lack of confidence in the kicker, perhaps in his own coaching of that player. It is said that all Jenkins says to his kickers are things such as: “Stick to your routine.”

If that is so, why does he need to be there?

Jenkins has scored 41 points for the Lions, 1,049 for Wales and was rugby union’s leading points scorer in internationals with 1,090 until Jonny Wilkinson passed him in 2008. There is no doubting that he has the qualifications to be the Wales kicking coach. But does he need to be out on the pitch, three, four, five times in a game?

You didn’t see Dave Alred peering over Wilkinson’s shoulder when he was the England kicking coach. Paul Burke didn’t take the tee on to the pitch and do a Jenkins when Leicester were beating Northampton at Welford Road last Saturday.

There is a time for coaching and it is before the game, at half-time and after the game. Jenkins’s desire to see closely how his kickers are striking the ball is understandable but he is the only one of the Wales coaches to get out on to the pitch.

At times in games, Robin McBryde, the Wales forwards coach, would probably love to be able to get an assessment from a player on the pitch as to why their scrum is creaking, but he rarely leaves his seat. Jenkins’s behaviour is taking coaching too far.

“I don’t mind whether I am on there or not,” Jenkins said. “It is irrelevant to me but obviously the boys like me there.” Come on Jenks, play the game. Get off the pitch. It isn’t done and it doesn’t look right.