Something’s afoot off the field in the City of Sails

Rumblings of discontent within Auckland rugby clearly have some basis, with union boss Jarrod Bear conceding the team that had performed so well on the park over the last three years had some important things to fix off it.

A report in the New Zealand Herald alleged ‘‘discontent‘‘ within the Auckland squad that were beaten finalists in last year’s provincial premiership and pointed to ‘‘fractured relationships’’ between some players and coaches.

Since Alama Ieremia came in as head coach three years ago, Auckland had won the Premiership title in 2018, were beaten semifinalists in 2019 and lost in the 2020 final to Tasman. And a number of players had been promoted into the All Blacks over that time.

The Herald report suggested that several of those high-profile All Blacks were either on the verge of, or at least looking to, leave the country’s largest union, naming Hoskins Sotutu and Ofa Tu’ungafasi as two players engaged in talks with neighbouring unions.

Already, assistant coach Filo Tiatia has announced he has resigned from his role with the team, which may or may not be related to alleged issues in the Auckland environment.

Bear, chief executive of the Auckland union, told Stuff that their annual review from the 2020 season had identified a number of key areas that they had to improve on.

He would not, however, directly answer a question on whether Auckland had a problem within its flagship team, preferring to continually refer back to the review.

‘‘Through that [review] we identify areas where we think we need to implement actions to support advancement in [the high-performance] area, so we’re setting the group up for success going forward,’’ Bear told Stuff when asked if his top team had major issues.

‘‘This year there are a clear set of actions that come out of that review and a number of different areas those actions relate to, and we’re working with players in bringing those to life and implementing them.’’

Not exactly an answer. So we asked again, did he have a problem?

‘‘Part of the review process . . . all players, coaches and managers input into it . . . the messages that came through were pretty clear and we’re putting those actions into place.’’

Bear would not reveal which All Blacks he had or had not managed to retain for this season, but said ‘‘close to 95 per cent’’ of their roster for this year was already confirmed.

Bear would not confirm that Ieremia had two years to run on his contract, but said he would be Auckland coach for 2021.