Steve Hansen: A saint or sinner?
Eighty lousy minutes of rugby . . . or, rather, 80 minutes of lousy rugby. It’s cruel to suggest one test match of 107 you presided over could define your career, but that might be the sad fact Steve Hansen contemplates when he sits back in that rocker, reaches for a refreshing thirst-quencher and considers his legacy.
Hansen is some rugby coach. Of that there can be no debate. His longevity alone is testament to that. He has just finished an eight-year term running the All Blacks show, which followed a preceding eight years as the chief assistant to Sir Graham Henry with the same team. Prior to that he was head coach of Wales for three years.
If maths isn’t your strong suit, that’s 19 years at the coalface of international rugby which came to an anti-climactic conclusion with the All Blacks’ third-place finish at the just completed Rugby World Cup in Japan. The New Zealanders lost one match to finish with a 5-1 record. It was the same amount of losses – noted Hansen ever so wryly – as champions South Africa and runners-up England (and beaten quarterfinalists France and Japan, for that matter).
But the fact of the matter is that the All Blacks failed in their mission to make history with a third straight World Cup title. It is the only currency by which they are judged. Success or failure. Gold or who cares? It’s a tough measuring stick, but it’s the one Hansen signed up to.
So, the question, as we assess the remarkable and wildly successful coaching tenure of Hansen, is this: just how much has that semifinal loss to England at Yokohama’s International Stadium blighted his legacy? Indeed, does he step away a coaching saint or sinner?
Truth be told, the answer, like many things when it comes to this enigmatic fellow, probably lies somewhere in the middle. You cannot judge an entire career on one match. You cannot rub out all the trophies, the achievements based on one 80-minute no show, a questionable selection (or two) and a motivational misfire.
England turned up that night with the game-plan, the attitude and the execution to achieve a famous victory; their opponents just did not turn up, period.
The upshot is that Hansen’s failure to win the World Cup is a black mark on his resume. It completes a rather disappointing last few seasons in which his All Blacks failed to win a series against the British and Irish Lions (the modern standard for southern hemisphere nations outside a World Cup), lost twice in quick succession to Ireland for the first time in the team’s history and now came home empty-handed from the global tournament.
Being part of three World Cup victories in succession, the last two as head coach, would undoubtedly have put Hansen into a pantheon of one. The greatest of the greats. The man whose team simply could not be beaten when it really mattered.
But it didn’t happen. They were a distant second against England and could find no Plan B when they were rocked on their heels in the opening quarter. And Hansen had to cop the defeat on the chin. He made a flat-out bad selection at No 6, handing England a breakdown advantage they rode to victory. He also clearly failed to instil the urgency his side needed to counter the threat from an England side that had spent 21⁄2 years preparing for this one match.
(It showed, too. The next week, in the final against South Africa, Eddie Jones’ men were a shadow
of the side that rolled right over the All Blacks. They had clearly played their final a week early).
Ultimately Hansen finishes batting .500 at World Cups. Two from four in his All Blacks career. One from two as head coach. Any rugby shot-caller on the planet would snatch your hand off grabbing that successrate. Henry got knighted for the same ratio.
Let’s look at the pure numbers. As head coach Hansen presided over 107 test matches, winning 93, losing 10, with four draws. That’s an 87 per cent win ratio. Or put another way, he lost just 9.3 per cent of those games. Remarkable. Excellent.
But the best ever? Maybe. Maybe not.
Henry, by way of comparison, won 88 of his 103 tests as head coach for an 85.4 per cent return. Not a heck of a lot of difference. They both collected Bledisloe Cup and Rugby Championship success like it was going out of fashion and dominated their northern foes. Other All Blacks coaches in the professional era: John Mitchell 82 per cent, Wayne Smith 70, John Hart 75, Laurie Mains 68.
Jones’ England tenure has seen him win 78 per cent of his tests while world champion Rassie Erasmus is running at a 65 per cent hit-rate with the Springboks since dragging them out of the mire at the start of 2018.
So the numbers stack up for Hansen. He has to go down as one of the greats, for sure. But the greatest of them all? Well, there is now just enough doubt about that to possibly haunt him if he was the insecure type.
What we do know is that Hansen steps away having done his job splendidly. He didn’t get everything right. He was a little heavy-handed with the Super Rugby coaches in calling them into line over access to his players midcampaign. He was sometimes just a little rough around the edges and he did lack a little grace there at the end of the World Cup with his comments around Warren Gatland.
It was also a bit rich for him to complain that doing media conferences were a bugbear of his time in the role when he insisted on doing so many himself. At the World Cup all teams bar the All Blacks shared that responsibility around their coaching staff.
As a selector he was at times a genius, with a wonderful feel for the right time to bring a young player into the fray at test level. He introduced a raft of inexperienced types in his time and got the vast majority of his calls right. He was also unafraid to make the hard call on an established player when his time was upon him. Ask Julian Savea or Owen Franks whether the Big Bear was the sentimental type. Ali Williams and Andrew Hore, for that matter.
Sure, there were misfires. Charles Piutau was a good ’un that got away. Maybe he could have got more out of Ben Smith at the end. Scott Barrett at No 6 for the recent semifinal against England was one he copped on the chin afterwards. Barrett neither played poorly, nor cost the All Blacks the match; but tactically it was not the way to go, and he admitted it.
But they were much, much fewer than the direct hits. Few, if any, in the game have a better feel for what’s needed to win tests than this bloke.
At the end he steps away as a great of our game. One of the very best to have coached the All Blacks. But the very best? That’s one that, like his team, he failed to nail when it really mattered in Japan.