Don’t panic – Chiefs CEO
Chiefs chief executive Mike Collins says questions over Colin Cooper’s future as coach of the struggling Super Rugby club are far too premature and it’s not time to panic yet.
Cooper’s position has come under the microscope of disgruntled supporters, following the team’s horrible start to the season, which became 0-3 after the galling 30-15 defeat to the Sunwolves in Hamilton on Saturday night.
A week ago it was a 54-17 hammering by the Brumbies in Canberra, following a first-round home game against the Highlanders which the Chiefs failed to close out from a handy position.
Cooper is in the second season of a three-year deal, and while Collins wasn’t guaranteeing anything in terms of that contract going the distance, he was putting his full support behind the coach as they look to turn things round.
‘‘What I’d say is that Colin’s our head coach and we just need to chuck all the support and resources round the whole coaching team that we can,’’ Collins said. ‘‘It’s way too early and too distracting to be talking about anything else at this point in the competition.’’
Asked how many losses it would take to enforce thoughts of change, Collins didn’t want to speculate.
‘‘I don’t want to comment on that and provide a distraction,’’ he said. ‘‘We’ve got a massive week coming up against the
‘‘We just need to chuck all the support and resources round the whole coaching team that we can.’’
Chiefs CEO Mike Collins
Crusaders. We’re fully behind this group at the moment. We’ll go through this campaign and see where we are at the finish.
‘‘In this industry, if you’re coaching a team that’s winning, everyone’s talking about you being the next All Blacks coach, and if the shoe’s on the other foot those conversations are distinctly different.’’
The main knock on Cooper is that while he achieved four semifinal finishes and one runners-up effort in his eight years with the Hurricanes between 2003-2010, many feel there should have been titles, such was his talent-laden playing group.
In his return to Super Rugby last year he found himself with an injury-riddled Chiefs squad, but they performed admirably in the circumstances, eventually losing a quarterfinal to the Hurricanes.
Dating back to that match, the franchise has now lost four games in a row for the first time since 2010-2011, with plenty of players having departed in the off-season, and injuries again hitting, despite contact training having been introduced earlier in the preseason to try to combat that.
‘‘The team that we’ve put on the park hasn’t been that consistent [in terms of personnel], but the silver lining for us, three games in, is that we’ve blooded a lot of talent,’’ Collins said.
‘‘Look, obviously the last two performances have been disappointing, and we’ve made a lot of errors in certain sections of the game.
‘‘The losses, they’re tough to take. But it’s week three, our job now is to rally round an organisation, stay really tight and identify the things that we can fix, and try and cut some of these mistakes out of our game.
‘‘I don’t think it’s time to panic. So we’re just trying to support the playing group, support the coaching and management team, and resource them as best we can to get the outcomes we want.’’
Collins felt rather than a lack
of effort or attitude from the players, it was sometimes that they were a bit the other way and trying too hard, forcing passes and the like.
He said the team’s fans ‘‘are
reasonably well-educated rugby supporters’’ and will have seen exactly where things were falling down on the park, calling on their loyalty to get through the testing time.