There were plenty who reckoned he’d be a terrible head coach and yet Steve Hansen has signed oˆ as arguably the best in All Blacks history.
IT WASN'T JUST STEVE HANSEN AND KIERAN READ WHO SIGNED OFF WITH THE ALL BLACKS IN TOKYO. A HANDFUL OF OTHER SENIOR FIGURES WERE ALSO LEAVING AND IT FELT VERY MUCH LIKE THE END OF AN ERA – ONE THAT HAD STARTED WITH INAUSPICIOUS BEGINNINGS.
When the All Blacks gathered to collect their bronze medals at Tokyo Stadium after defeating Wales 40-17, there was quite definitely an overwhelming sense of it being the end of an era.
Not only was Steve Hansen, a coach with 16 years association with the team leaving, so too were captain Kieran Read and other long servers such as Sonny Bill Williams, Ben Smith, Ryan Crotty and Matt Todd.
Obviously, the bronze medal match was not where they had all wanted things to end. The dream was to end things at Yokohama Stadium the following night, crowned world champions for a third successive time.
This was a team that had set itself big goals during Hansen's tenure and typically the higher they reached, the better they played.
But it wasn't to be in Japan. The All Blacks didn't have the tactical smarts to beat England in the semi-final.
They didn't have the accuracy or urgency and the direct, confrontational football mixed with precision and creativity that they had produced to beat South Africa and Ireland, it wasn't anywhere to be seen against England.
It made for a disappointing end to what had been an incredible decade for the All Blacks.
And that was the important thing to not lose sight of as some great players and a great coach bid farewell to international rugby in Tokyo. It was a time to be reflective, but not sad and critical.
It was time to appreciate that the last 10 years had been special – a period that had seen the All Blacks consistently play some of the best rugby of the professional era.
The numbers told a story in themselves. In 2010 and 2011 the All Blacks played 26 tests and won 23, including being crowned world champions.
It was a two-year stint of stunning rugby that saw the All Blacks score 119 tries and beat every major rugby nation at least once.
So when Hansen took over as head coach in 2012, there was strong media expectation that the good times were going to end.
He was inheriting an older team of athletes, many of whom had been driven by the need for redemption since the World Cup failure of 2007. Now that they had won the World Cup, how much motivation would there be left for the likes of Richie McCaw, Dan Carter, Ma'a Nonu, Conrad Smith and Ali Williams? Would they still be as driven as they were?
And what about Hansen? How would he make the transition from assistant to head coach? There was a strong feeling that wouldn't go so well as throughout 2009 he'd been at war with the media.
He'd been abrasive and aggressive when the All Blacks had struggled for form and the pressure piled up and many felt he wasn't head coach material.
There was also some concern that his assistant, Ian Foster, wasn't of the right calibre either. Foster's period in charge of the Chiefs hadn't been overwhelmingly successful and many doubted he had the vision or ability to add much to the All Blacks.
That post World Cup period was a nervous time for New Zealand rugby fans. And yet eight years later, Hansen received a spontaneous standing ovation from the Kiwis at Tokyo Stadium where he brought the most successful coaching reign in All Blacks history to a close.
The All Blacks had won 89 per cent of their tests under Hansen. They had won the World Cup in 2015. They had won the Rugby Championship in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2018 and they held the Bledisloe Cup for all of that time.
The numbers didn't tell the full story, though. Hansen was spontaneously cheered because the public had come to love his laconic style.
They had come to see that he was a quintessential Kiwi bloke leading things in a uniquely New Zealand way.
His All Blacks had learned the true meaning of humility. They had shown they could lose with grace and dignity and that they were strong enough to show their true emotions in the face of defeat and then bounce back.
His tenure had been marked by his ability to strike the right tone. He'd always managed to be funny at the right time, rattling off some memorable one-liners.
He'd known when to niggle another coach and when to leave it. He'd known when to protect a player from public criticism and when to let them have some.
He'd known when an issue needed to be talked about in the context of the greater good rather than self-interest and he'd made the whole business of winning and losing seem less important than using the game to better young people.
It was difficult to believe as Hansen took his leave, that there had been so much doubt about how things would go with him at the helm. It seemed faintly ridiculous that it had been questioned whether he was a natural head coach.
It turned out that the reason Hansen had struggled at times as an assistant was not because he was out of his depth, but because he was so much better suited to being in charge.
Towing someone else's line was hard for him and while he did it with impeccable loyalty when he was serving under Graham Henry between 2004 and 2011, it wasn't his rightful role.
When he was in charge he could make decisions that were his and the freedom empowered him.
He was able, as head coach, to motivate the likes of McCaw and Carter into chasing greatness between 2012 and 2015. He charged his team with becoming the most dominant in history.
That goal triggered something in the old guard who had stayed on after winning the 2011 World Cup and inspired them into playing even better.
Hansen also astutely introduced a new generation of young stars at the start of his tenure to ensure the team would regenerate seamlessly when the legends eventually had to call it quits.
In came Beauden Barrett, Brodie Retallick, Sam Cane, Aaron Smith and Dane Coles while Kieran Read was identified early as McCaw's successor and cleverly groomed to take over.
All of which meant that come 2016 the All Blacks were again able to surprise everyone. They lost 800-plus test caps after the 2015 World Cup, but there was no drop in form the following year.
In fact, the performances of the All Blacks in 2016 were even better than they had been the year before and they went on to win a world record 18 consecutive tests.
So what became clear in Tokyo was that these had not been normal times. The failure to win a third consecutive World Cup was not a sign of things being in decline, more a reminder of how hard it is to sustain the sort of success the All Blacks had enjoyed since 2012.
Perhaps Foster, having worked with Hansen for the last eight years, put it best when he said: “He'll [Hansen] probably hit me if I get gushy with him but it's been a really special period.
“When you look at the environment and the leadership he's been incredibly demanding on this group and expectations have always been high but it's been coupled with a massive empathy for the individual and when you get the mix right, you get a formula that's pretty special.
“It's the fact the guys can put their hand up and say they're struggling and get help with that but they can also get a boot up the bum if they cross a line. It's a blend Steve brings and he's brought it beautifully into the group.
“He's been a massive driver behind the standards we've been chasing. I can't say anything higher than he's added to a legacy that means a lot to him, and he's added his own little special chapter and Tash and his kids should be incredibly proud.”