Hansen master of the coaching dark art of awe

Modern game is now all about the cult of personality

Tin Tokyo

he four teams to have survived this far at the World Cup are vastly different in playing style, vision and philosophy.

Yet they are united in that they are all respectively governed by a head coach with a huge presence and a PhD in setting an agenda.

If this World Cup has taught us anything, it is surely that coaching now is all about the cult of personality and that when New Zealand Rugby’s board come to appoint a new All Blacks head coach before the end of the year, they can’t lose sight of that.

A job that was once about organising 15 blokes to run in the same direction has morphed into something entirely different in a professional age of mass media coverage, sponsor influence and free labour markets that have led to the global dissemination of rugby intelligence.

The head coaching role is no longer the domain of the technical and tactical mastermind, operating in the shadows of the training ground, clad in tracksuit and commanding those around him with shrill blasts of the whistle.

A head coach is now a figurehead, a statesman, a near genius in the art of psychological warfare. A head coach these days has to understand the difference between tactics and strategy and be conscious that they are employed to win wars, not battles.

They have to be an arch manipulator of referees, players and the media and while they don’t need to be academically smart, they have to be street smart; cunning and with a deep insight into the flaws, frailties and limits of the human condition.

It is an exposed and lonely place. The head coach sits on the front-line, providing the biggest clues of all to to where his side may be weak, where they might be strong and how they intend to attack the opposition on game night.

And perhaps it’s no surprise that the last four teams standing are coached by men with combative instincts that have been used so well over the years that they have developed bigger profiles than most of the players.

Steve Hansen, Eddie Jones, Warren Gatland and Rassie Erasmus are the big four — the men who have come to see that a press conference is not a chore, but an opportunity to destabilise their opposition and potentially impact their preparation and performance.

They get that coaching is a job only for those with the mental strength to accept that their every decision, selection and utterance will create a narrative of some kind and they have to be ready to bend it in the direction they want.

Call it the ability to control the message, but it is really more than that. It’s the ability to detect weakness in others and strategise a means to exploit it that may often require having to plan three to four moves ahead.

It’s an art form because to be aggressive or provocative — to play what are universally known as mind games with a rival coach — is to invite a response that may prove to be destabilising for the initial aggressor.

The retaliation can potentially be the killer blow and so it takes a deep