Hansen has led an All Blacks revolution
The coach’s clever, inclusive methods are a far cry from the dictatorial approach of regimes in the past.
It will be astonishing if the coach who eventually replaces Steve Hansen in the All Blacks is not working alongside him by the time the 2019 World Cup starts. That man will probably be Ian Foster.
Cue old-school outrage from Dave Rennie, Joe Schmidt, Jamie Joseph, and Warren Gatland fans who will compare their man’s record as a head coach with Foster’s modest achievements as head coach of the Chiefs: One final and one semi in eight years.
But here’s the trick. All Black coaching has been revolutionised under Hansen. A system that began with Graham Henry has been expanded and cemented in place by Hansen.
He’s made All Black coaching a cooperative venture, rather than a dictatorship.
Traditionally all All Black power resided in the head coach, and many were happily to crudely wield it.
Jack Gleeson, who in 1978 coached our first grand slam All Black tour of Britain for 50 years, swore to me that when he first became an All Black selector in ‘72 he was told by head coach Ivan Vodanovich he could pick one player for a British tour, ‘‘and then your job is to make the tea.’’
In 2016 Hansen, whose long suit is his ability to read people, and then get the best out of them, encourages others to express ideas.
‘‘He asks questions, and listens to the answers,’’ says an All Black insider. ‘‘It’s how he gets players to take on leadership. After a discussion the player feels he was the one who had the idea.’’
What’s really new and different about Hansen is the trust he places in the people around him, thereby sharing his power.
Reasonably enough, given that any failures land at their door, All Black coaches have tended to micro-manage.
It didn’t help the cause of coaching unity that the selection process itself was adversarial. Think Deans versus Henry. Sometimes the rivalry was brutal. One candidate from the amateur era confided that to be in the same room with another man seeking the All Black position ‘‘would make me feel physically ill.’’
There was usually a winner and a loser when the coaching job was decided, and sometimes the New Zealand union tried to make them work together, as at the disastrous 1991 World Cup, when Alex Wyllie and John Hart were appointed co-coaches.
Even when the coaching position was settled, the handover, if there even was one, could be icy. The late master of innocent-faced pot stirring, Paul Holmes, knew damn well the answer would be ‘‘no’’ when he asked new coach John Hart on television late in 1995 if he’d had a phone call to congratulate him from the retiring coach, Laurie Mains.
Here’s where the Hansen situation gets very different.
He now operates almost as a helicopter coach. The final say on everything rests with him, but Foster, as a prime example, does much of the hands-on coaching.
Given that the Hansen model has been so stunningly successful, producing not only great results, but also dynamic, exciting rugby, it seems only logical that whoever takes over should have seen at first-hand how the All Black machine runs.
Will that be someone from outside the current group? If it is then the newcomer surely needs to be on board in the not too distant future.
The question then is would a Rennie, a Schmidt, or a Joseph be prepared to relinquish a head coaching job and be an assistant at the All Blacks? How well will a man used to being his own boss play with others?
In 1987 head All Black coach Brian Lochore had a problem with two hugely successful provincial coaches, Hart and Wyllie, as his assistants. While they presented very differently, Hart as a persuasive corporate man, Wyllie as a gruff farmer, scratch the surface and they were both hugely competitive Alpha males.
Lochore’s brilliantly simple solution was to split them up, having only one doing on-field coaching with him at a time, and the All Blacks won the World Cup.
But that option isn’t possible in the professional era. Coaches and players spend so much time together now, everyone has to comfortable in their roles, and with each other. So Hansen has demolished the coach as king model. He’s proven that it works.
Hansen and his coaching team took over a World Cup winning side, and in their first year in charge picked nine new All Blacks. All are still in the All Black squad, a staggering talentspotting rate. In 52 games from 2012 the All Blacks have lost just three tests. They became the first side to win back to back World Cups. They’ve also played brilliant attacking football, and presented well off the field.
Therefore I’ll happily face the jaded cynicism of keyboard warriors and armchair heroes when I say this is the greatest ever era of All Black rugby, and would like to see the methods that have made it so continue. (I speak as someone who hasn’t always been so glowing in his praise of the All Blacks. In the past I was called the biggest prick unhung by one All Black coach, and featured in two scathing pages about my short-comings in the autobiography of another.)
I also see no logic in the idea that, basically to give someone else a go, Hansen should have stepped down next year. Apply that thinking to players and Richie McCaw would have retired long before he captained the All Blacks to a second World Cup win.
The good thing is that the petty envy of success that saw the greatest revolutionary of the amateur era, our only undefeated All Black coach, Fred Allen, quit in 1968 before he was sacked, won’t drive the thinking of officials about a new All Black coaching team.
New Zealand Rugby management is not infallible. With the benefit of Olympic hindsight the feeling of some in the men’s sevens team that the iron fist of coach Gordon Tietjens badly needed a velvet glove should have been heeded sooner.
But with the All Blacks not only carrying a sensationally good record, but also playing a great style of rugby, it’s impossible to believe the boardroom support for the inclusive systems Hansen has developed will be tossed aside.
He asks questions, and listens to the answers. It’s how he gets players to take on leadership. After a discussion the player feels he was the one who had the idea. All Blacks insider