LIFE AFTER SHAG:
Why Gatland’s not the man for ABs job
The subplot to the Lions series was the respective battle of wits between the two coaching teams. At times, it moved into the forefront, as there was enough said to build the perception of tension between Steve Hansen and Warren Gatland.
It was a storyline that had traction — Hansen versus Gatland — and yet it was more of a red herring than anything else. It was about creating theatre and — not deliberately — obscured the fact there was a genuine coaching battle of sorts playing out.
Maybe it’s not fair to call it a battle, but there was an intriguing chance to compare and contrast the styles and influence of Gatland and that of All Blacks assistant coach Ian Foster.
Intriguing because the expectation is strong that both men, former teammates at Waikato and short-lived coaching partners at the Chiefs, will be vying for the All Blacks head coaching job when Hansen steps down at the end of 2019.
The British media by the end of the tour appeared to be convinced Gatland had pushed his claim to somewhere near the front of the queue.
That’s the British media for you, though. When the disaster they expected never arrived, they elevated Gatland to near Messiah status.
What Gatland did was confirm what everyone in New Zealand already knew — that he is a good coach. Experienced, steady and respected by all. He selected his test teams well — or rather he made astute judgements on how to fix the problems that arose in the first test.
He had the Lions well organised and motivated, and at times, they genuinely surprised with their attacking thrust. Ultimately, they didn’t lose the test series and that fact alone puts a big feather in Gatland’s cap.
However, for all the obvious success, there were a few oddities that arose and no doubt caused a little alarm among New Zealand Rugby officials.
Gatland’s tetchiness about the perception teams coached by him play a specific style of rugby was hard to understand. It was also a touch absurd and perhaps deliberately selfprotective to claim early in the tour that the New Zealand media were running a coordinated campaign to personally victimise him.
The Lions were awful in their first two games and it seemed as if the local media were being berated for not conveniently glossing over this fact.
Analysis, perhaps harsh at times, was interpreted as wider negativity of the tour and wider concept and the Lions too readily recast themselves in the role of victim.
But these peripheral matters are likely to be rendered moot by 2019 as the bigger impediment to Gatland taking over the All Blacks has nothing to do with his coaching credentials.
In 20-plus years of coaching at the highest level, he has worked in New Zealand for only two.
He hasn’t been on any pathway, given any long or loyal service to the game here, and while he is a proud Kiwi, and New Zealanders should rightly be proud of him, he simply hasn’t punched the clock in this part of the world.
And that is a problem not just for Gatland but for a few other possible candidates for the role when it becomes available.
Joe Schmidt is clearly a smart and effective coach. He’s equipped with multiple qualities but, like Gatland, he can’t necessarily say he has given his best seasons or the majority of his years to New Zealand.
He left for France in 2007 after short stints with Bay of Plenty and the Blues and it’s this question of longevity of service, of commitment to the domestic pathway, that New Zealand Rugby is going to have to consider at length.
Schmidt and Gatland sit in contrast to Graham Henry, who was the first to coach another international team, then be awarded the All Blacks job.
Henry coached at the top level for close to 20 years before he shifted to Wales, largely because he felt that was the best, perhaps only way he could gain the international experience he would need to make an improved bid to coach the All Blacks.
Doing the time in New Zealand is critical to validate the system, to protect those coaches who commit to progressing from the Mitre 10 Cup, to Super Rugby to the All Blacks.
Making that last jump is the hardest because the pyramid is at its most narrow at the top, which is why the likes of Henry and Robbie Deans took international jobs elsewhere when they felt their respective paths were blocked after they had given extended service in provincial and Super Rugby.
This is, of course, where the case for Foster is strongest. He has progressed almost as the flow chart is set up — coaching at club level, then Waikato, progressing to the Chiefs and then taking the role of All Blacks assistant.
He will have close to 20 years’ service in New Zealand by 2019, with eight of those having been with the All Blacks.
That, in itself, doesn’t make him the strongest candidate but it will leave NZR having to make an extraordinarily compelling case to pick someone from outside the system ahead of him.
Where there are questions for Foster to answer is in his readiness to graduate from his assistant role to being a head coach again.
Since he came into the All Blacks in 2012, he has made a valuable and significant contribution.
He has found himself in the role and been able to use his tactical expertise and astute analysis to build effective attacking structures.
Players have come to value him and his relationships within the team are strong and built on mutual respect.
In relation to the series against the Lions, the suggestion the All Blacks were out-coached is hard to make stick.
Their attack game was a failure of execution rather than planning and Foster can feel satisfied that if a few more passes had stuck, as they should have in the third test, all the coaching plaudits would have been going his way.
The role of assistant is not that of the head coach, however, and Foster’s time at the Chiefs between 2004 and 2011 was not marked with any great success and the franchise became known as the country’s great underachievers.
Perhaps his skills are better suited to being an assistant and the head job won’t suit him, but then again, similar arguments were put forward about Hansen and they proved to be spectacularly wrong.