Foster ‘right man’ to be boss
Retiring All Blacks head coach says his lieutenant well placed to take over. Marc Hinton reports.
As much as he dared, retiring All Blacks head coach Steve Hansen has strongly endorsed Ian Foster to take over the now-vacant top job. He talked about his assistant for the last eight years having a significant ‘‘head-start’’ on his fellow contenders and hinted at an outstanding support crew being assembled.
Of course, it is not Hansen’s call to make. After 16 years as part of the All Blacks coaching group, the last eight as its head, he now steps away to take up a director of rugby position with Toyota in Japan that he has made clear will carry a heck of a lot less stress than his last couple of roles. And it goes without saying his view is coloured heavily by his long-standing association with Foster.
Hansen will not be consulted officially, but he’s bound to be spoken to. That is a lot of intellectual property he walks away with and it would be remiss of new NZ Rugby chief executive Mark Robinson not to tap into it in some way. Anyway, Hansen admits he won’t be able to help himself: ‘‘I won’t get asked but, me being me, I’ll probably offer an opinion.’’
It was notable that Foster stayed well clear of the media on Saturday in Tokyo as the head coach made one last appearance in the wake of their Friday night victory over Wales to secure third place at the tournament. It has been an incredibly busy World Cup for Hansen as he has shouldered most of the press conference responsibilities himself, steadfastly preventing any of his staff, save Foster, from fronting for duty.
But Foster is clearly not ready to speak on his own candidature just yet, despite suggesting throughout the tournament he would when things came to an end. Never mind, Hansen had plenty to say on his behalf.
Asked how important it was that the new coach checks his ego at the door and surrounds himself with some top quality personnel, Hansen was unequivocal.
‘‘Getting the right team is paramount. If you can do that the job becomes so much easier . . . you’re not trying to do everything by yourself,’’ he said. ‘‘If you make that mistake, you’re going to fail. The role of the head coach is to helicopter over the group, have an understanding of every area of our business and then select the right people to do that job and let them get on with it.
‘‘And along the way you quietly nudge them and challenge them to be better and get them to have a voice where they’re demanding of themselves and others around them. So getting the right people is a hell of a good start to the job.’’
Hansen said it was crucial the new head coach assessed his own skill-sets and then identified the areas where he needed support. Then he jumped in and offered a pretty emphatic endorsement of his long-time lieutenant.
‘‘I guess with hindsight because Fozzie has been there for the last eight years and done a fantastic job and understands what happens, he’s got a good head-start on everybody else on what’s needed.
‘‘He’s known for a long time that I’ve been leaving and he’s put together a very, very strong [support] team I think and if that team comes together they’ll have a lot of the ingredients that are needed.
‘‘But it will be up to the panel to go through all the candidates and assess all the groups and see what they come up with.’’
Hansen steered well clear of any commitments on future roles and what he may or may not be prepared to do to help New Zealand rugby. But he did concede he would find it hard not to help Kiwi coaches who sought out his support.
‘‘I love the game, so somewhere along the line if someone wants me to help them, I’ll help them. I don’t necessarily need to have a job to do that but we’ll see what falls out of the sky. I know you all want me to say what I’m going do, but I don’t honestly know. I’m not really sure what it’s called, and what I’m going to be doing and I haven’t really signed anything.
‘‘I’ve spent no time thinking about it. All my energy has gone into trying to win this thing, and clearly we didn’t do that . . . we just chose the wrong day to have a bad day, and we had an opponent who were hungry and had a lot of pain from the previous tournament.
‘‘We’ll have some people continue to be part of this team who will have a chance to rectify that. They’ll carry that pain because it’s personal, and hopefully it inspires them to work harder to turn up and win another one.’’
He doesn’t mention it but Foster comes into that category. He’s now won one and lost one as an assistant and Hansen clearly believes he deserves first crack as the boss man.
In terms of the state of the team he hands over, Hansen said that was for other people to assess. But he did say: ‘‘I’m pretty proud of what we’ve done in my time. Like the players, your job as coach is to leave it better than you found it. I think we’re in pretty good nick.’’
Kieran Read would have clung to a losing ticket if he had tried to be Richie McCaw’s clone. When McCaw waltzed out of rugby after the 2015 World Cup in Britain and passed the All Blacks captaincy to Read, it could have been the hospital pass from hell.
McCaw’s achievements during an All Blacks career that began in late 2001 spoke volumes. Expecting his replacement to eclipse his deeds as captain could have been a messy business.
Read knew it would have been an error to try and be another McCaw, that he had to create his own style and earn the trust of the players and coach Steve Hansen.
It could be said, with justification, that Read was fortunate to replace the man many consider the greatest rugby player New Zealand has produced.
No-one could accuse the All Blacks of allowing their standards to slip during McCaw’s 10 years as captain, ensuring his successor wasn’t lumbered with the task of rebuilding a broken team.
Not only did Read have continuity in terms of the All Blacks’ coaching staff, the bulk of the team that retained the Webb Ellis Cup in 2015 were contracted beyond the tournament.
Senior players Keven Mealamu, Tony Woodcock, Conrad Smith, Ma’a Nonu, Dan Carter and McCaw moved on but Hansen had the foresight to already blood the next wave of players.
Read was already surrounded by hardened veterans, who were proven winners.
Between them, Read and his players hoped to retain the Webb Ellis Cup in Japan.
Yet they couldn’t do it.
The All Blacks, with Read in charge, suffered a shock 19-7 defeat to England in their World Cup semifinal in Yokohama last weekend.
A loss of this magnitude was always going to result in great discomfort.
Few, if any, players would have felt it as much as Read, 34, who retired from international rugby after the bronze final against Wales in Tokyo.
McCaw, as much as anyone, should be able to empathise.
He may have achieved great things during his 148 test career, but McCaw suffered the humiliation of being the skipper of the only All Blacks team to lose a World Cup quarterfinal.
France conquered the All Blacks in Cardiff in 2007, and McCaw had to shoulder responsibility for the team’s inability to alter its game plan or deal with the young English referee Wayne Barnes.
It was McCaw’s second year in the job, having replaced Tana Umaga after he retired in late 2005; that adversity resulted in McCaw and the coaching staff, led by Sir Graham Henry, reshaping the All Blacks into a team that was to win the next two tournaments.
Read wasn’t involved in that event, he didn’t make his All Blacks debut until late the following year, but the coaches quickly identified him as a future captain.
As Hansen said recently No 8 Read would have been an All Blacks skipper sooner if openside flanker McCaw hadn’t been near indestructible and played 148 tests.
No eyebrows were raised when Read was confirmed as McCaw’s successor, because he had already begun edging his way out of the latter’s shadow.
Having led the All Blacks on nine occasions before McCaw retired ensured Read, who had also replaced McCaw as Crusaders skipper several seasons prior, was already versed in the job of leading men.
His first game in charge was against Italy in Rome in late 2012, with the All Blacks requiring a final quarter surge to secure a 42-10 victory.
It wasn’t until the All Blacks were beaten 40-29 by Ireland in Chicago that Read had to deal with the emotions of being a losing test captain.
Until that defeat at Soldier Field he had had 19 consecutive test wins as captain, a record that still stands.
A drawn series with the British and Irish Lions and a loss to Australia in Brisbane in 2017, which ended the All Blacks’ run of 18 consecutive tests wins, made for a less than satisfactory year.
South Africa and Ireland also stung the All Blacks in 2018, and proved the catalyst for Hansen to install a fresh game plan that required his men to be as fit, fast and skilled as they had been in their lives.
Hailed as the great entertainers, the All Blacks lit up the World Cup in Japan.
Until England outplayed them across the park in the semi. The All Blacks were out of title contention.
Read’s dream of joining McCaw and David Kirk in lifting the Webb Ellis Cup disappeared under a white wave of English defenders at Yokohama Stadium.
The look on Read’s face said it all. He was shattered.
He had won two World Cup medals in 2011 and 2015 and had been named World Rugby player of the year in 2013, but that meant nothing.
Unlike McCaw in 2007, Read’s time was up. He wasn’t going to get a second chance as a captain at a World Cup. Read, who played his 127th test in the bronze final against Wales, had long moved out of McCaw’s shadow.
He just couldn’t bask in the golden glow of winning a World Cup tournament.
No eyebrows were raised when Read was confirmed as McCaw’s successor, because he had already begun edging his way out of the latter’s shadow.