Player rest policy is not perfect, admits ABs’ boss

All Blacks coach Ian Foster has admitted the player rest policy is not perfect.

“I don’t know what you can expect in the future, but what I do know is that every season it’s different — we’re moving international windows, we’re changing things around, we’ve now got tests after Super Rugby which I think is great, rather than interfering with it halfway through.

“It’s an imperfect calendar, and the goal is to make sure we’ve got players playing from January 31 to November 20, and there’s a little bit of a cost to that, because we’ve got to manage workload and player welfare.”

Foster said NZ Rugby understood that it didn’t fit everyone. “But we just need to get together with the coaches again and have another talk. We’ve all agreed on what we wanted to do for this year, and now everyone’s saying there’s some other ideas — well that’s great, let’s listen to them, and figure it out.”

He said flexibility came at a cost — because one day your team might be playing another team which has a couple of All Blacks playing and yours aren’t allowed to, so people had to learn to live with that.

“This isn’t a ‘them vs us’ thing. It’s ‘how the heck do we get players performing at their peak right through a long season?’ It does require breaks, and it does require some management of time and there’s always a cost to them.

“If you look at the results of it, we’ve been pretty good in Super Rugby. We often have four teams in the playoffs and we’ve won it regularly, and the same with the All

Blacks. So the overall policy is working. But there’s been a call for more flexibility and I think that’s worth listening to.”

Talking about the big issues facing the All Blacks this year, Foster said replacing players such as Kieran Read, and Brodie Retallick, who will be away for a year and a half, was difficult.

“You can’t replace those guys. But what they do is they create great opportunities for the next tier. I’m an optimist when it comes to New Zealand rugby — I know we dwell a lot on the negatives but the fact is, every time there’s an opportunity we see young people coming in and taking it and that’s the good work done at the Mitre 10 and Super level, they’re bringing players through that are well equipped.

“It’s not a position of concern [No 8], but it’s definitely a position of interest. We used Ardie [Savea] there before, and I love the potential of what he does, you have to him on the park, and we’ve got a number of guys we’ve utilised. This Super campaign is really vital for those positions — six and eight — we need people to show week-in, week-out that they’ve got what it takes to make the next step.

“What’s keeping me awake? I’m just too excited — I just want to rip into it. I think we’ve got a bunch of guys who have got a point to prove, and we’ve got some great opportunity to bring some new talent through, so it’s quite nice looking at a bit of a clean slate.

“We’ve got to sort a captain out, so there are a few thoughts going on in that space.”