You guys ever played real rugby yourselves? There's bugger all plays where the first five sprints onto a halfbacks pass. Hit ups or crash ball is mostly taken up by the 2nd five or centre. At first five you only usually get up a jog at best. Re-watch some of the major tests of last year and you'll notice that about a third of the time the first five is taking it at half pace and sometimes it's a static position to relay the ball on!
The halfback's job is to clear the ruck, the first five co-ordinates the attack, and from there plays happen. I'm not saying the first five never runs onto a ball, but it's more like in JLR in real life, the first five only sort of fast jogs at best onto the ball, otherwise you'd have a fraction of a second before you'd hit the defence, which is moving up on you. The first five is not set deep enough to sprint onto the ball, unless he's crashing it up.
I do believe that R2005 did have it wrong because the first five was too sluggish to respond and couldn't have felt any more like he had lead boots. Thats because sometimes the first five needs to be one of the quickest players off the mark, as he is in charge of giving the outside backs space and time. To do this you need to make snappy, fast decisions and manouver quickly. Which in R2005 was impossible.
In set plays more often than not the first five only has to get the ball to the correct player after two strides and sprinting onto the ball doesn't provide the necessary time to do that. For Dan Carter or anyone. Often he's scored tries from broken play, or coming into a move later. Not running onto the ball during a set play.
So, while we'd like to see a first five with quick responsiveness do we need to see them flying onto the ball from 15 metres back. The answer is no.