‘I MADE DECISIONS I LOOK BACK ON NOW AND KNOW I SHOULDN’T HAVE DONE IT. BUT THAT’S HINDSIGHT’
In the second instalment of a wide-ranging interview with SIMON THOMAS, Steve Hansen talks through his reflections of a drawn series with the Lions three years ago and where the game turns now for salvation amid the coronavirus crisis...
THREE years on and it still rankles with Steve Hansen. For the majority of people, the 2017 drawn Test series between the All Blacks and the Lions is remembered as a compelling rugby saga, a piece of pure sporting drama.
So, with time having passed, I wondered whether the man who coached the host nation was now able to see it in that light and just be happy to have been a part of it.
Knowing Steve Hansen as I do, I should have known better.
“No,” he replies. “Because I don’t think I coached as well as I could have that year.
“I was pretty disappointed in myself and some of the coaching decisions I made.
“So, that makes it hard to distract from it.
“I also know it could have gone drastically a different way.
“There was that red card in the second Test and we led well deep into that game.
“Then to lose it on a penalty where a guy tackles a guy jumping to catch the ball from a poor pass, when everyone knows that wasn’t intentional of that rule, that’s frustrating.
“Then the last game was frustrating with the decision at the end (with Ken Owens) that was so obvious to everybody, but no-one wanted to admit to it.
“So, those things they hang around and play on your mind.
“But the biggest thing that stops me from moving on is really how I coached, because I think I could have done it better.”
What, I ask, bugs him in particular about his own performance?
“Oh, you just know,” he says, speaking down the line from his home in Christchurch.
“I made a couple of decisions that I look back on and think I shouldn’t have done that.
“It’s the same with the World Cup, the week of the semi-final against England.
“There were a couple of things I could have driven differently that I didn’t do and you kind of wish you had.
“But hindsight is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?
“I guess what’s the difference between hindsight and experience?”
Returning to my original question about the tied Test series with the Lions, he says: “So, was it a great tournament? Look, any Lions series is great because it brings so much more than a normal series because it brings the combination of four different countries to do battle against one and it also brings a whole lot of supporters.
“I love the Lions concept and it disappoints me they have shortened the tour to South Africa next year.”
It’s abundantly clear Hansen hasn’t been able to put what happened in 2017 to bed yet, so I wonder what he makes of Warren Gatland’s suggestion of staging a decider next year ahead of the Lions tour of South Africa.
Would that perhaps be an opportunity to close old wounds once and for all?
“Well, it won’t be a decider because it won’t be the same people involved,” he replies, ever the realist.
“But what he’s really saying is let’s have this game to try and help make some money for the game because the game is in trouble.
“You have got one rugby nation, in the United States, who have gone bankrupt, we’ve got Australia on the brink, we know England have got a financial crisis, everybody will have because you are not getting paid the TV rights and those are what makes the game go around.
“The game is in financial crisis. People are struggling.
“So, I think anything that allows us to create some income to support the game is important.”
The crisis has, of course, been sparked by the complete shutdown of the game due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Hansen believes it’s crucial the sport makes the right decisions when rugby eventually resumes.
“We have an opportunity now to start with a blank page because you have got everybody putting self-interest to the side,” he said.
“They know they could be gone if they don’t do the right thing.
“So, it’s a great opportunity to bring everybody together, north, south, individual countries and do what it is right for the game. It’s been a long time coming because it’s been needed for quite some time.
“There has been a lot of self-interest and if we don’t do the right thing we could lose the game and that would be a tragedy.
“We have lost our way in rugby a little bit and we haven’t been working well enough together.
“Maybe this pandemic has caused a crisis that means we have to. If that’s the case, then that’s one positive to come out of something that’s pretty ordinary.”
Hansen is well qualified to comment, having been at the sharp end of the sport for the past two decades.
After cutting his coaching teeth with Cantebury and then taking his first steps on the international stage with Wales, he went on to enjoy glittering success with New Zealand, winning two World Cups, first as an assistant to Graham Henry in 2011 and then as the No.1 in 2015.
It has been some journey since he arrived in Cardiff in late 2001, suddenly finding himself installed as the Welsh national coach following Henry’s departure.
“There is a lot of water gone under the bridge since then and a lot of learning and a lot of change,” he says.
The former policeman was a pretty no-nonsense, authoritarian figure during his time in Wales, so I wonder whether he feels he has mellowed over the years?
“I am still forceful now at times, but you’ve got to pick the times,” he said.
“The difference is, after 20 years, you pick the times better.
“I remember when we (Wales) lost to Italy in 2003, how could you ever forget?
“At half-time, I tried a tactic of trying to be grumpy.
“I look back on it now and that wasn’t the team, nor the time, to do it because that team lacked confidence.
“It was a great learning experience. I reflected on it afterwards and knew I had done it wrong.
“If I had gone into that changing shed and given them confidence, we could have come out on top.
“By me going in and giving them a gee-up, I made some guys that weren’t confident even less confident. It didn’t help the situation.
“But you hope you learn from those situations and I think I have.
“I remember an All Blacks game where we were in trouble against Ireland and that half-time talk certainly didn’t reflect the scoreboard.
“The team were a bit shell-shocked, so there was no point me going in and giving them a rev up. A rev up doesn’t work very often. Once every two years.
“So, you’ve got to make sure you pick the real right time.
“The Welsh team wasn’t at any point ready for that. They were a young group, a very young team, very inexperienced.”
It’s clear Hansen looks back on those years in Wales as beneficial in his development as a coach and helpful in terms of what he went on to achieve, with the back-to-back World Cups and a succession of Rugby Championship titles.
But he’s also quick to acknowledge his career could have taken a very different path.
“You have got to remember we bombed the World Cup in 2007,” he said, looking back to New Zealand’s