PHIL GIFFORD
Don’t upset your employers and don’t display any doubt are good places to start
Lessons for ABs’ coaching hopefuls
The contest for the All Blacks coaching job feels a little weird because we haven’t had real competition for the position for 12 years. There are lessons, as always, from what’s happened during the selection process in the past. But sift through the entrails as much as you like, they don’t give us a great deal of insight into how today’s rugby bosses might jump.
Lesson No 1: Don’t upset the people who have the power to sack you.
The last time the All Blacks finished third at a World Cup, in 2003, the rush to dump then coach John Mitchell made Usain Bolt look snail-like.
On the night of November 20, in Sydney, the All Blacks had beaten France 40-13 in the bronze playoff.
The next morning, NZRU officials held a press conference in a Sydney hotel. Chief executive Chris Moller made it clear Mitchell would struggle to keep his job.
“I think there are a number of areas of improvement that are required and certainly we need to lift the bar in a number of areas,” said Moller. “I think all of you would raise some concerns around the areas of the media, probably the interface with the rugby union and possibly some sponsor activity as well.”
NZRU chairman Jock Hobbs said the job might have been advertised even if the All Blacks had won the Cup, but that anyway: “We’re not happy that we haven’t won the World Cup and nor is John Mitchell. We’re very disappointed. It was our No 1 priority for the year.”
Mitchell was already on a plane on the way to Wellington while the Sydney conference was on.
Later, on TVNZ’s Sunday programme, he said the comments of Hobbs and Moller were “hard to swallow — it was like my employer did not support me”.
Why was the mood to cut Mitchell adrift so strong? Because he had not so much bitten the hand that fed him, as acted as if he’d forgotten it was even there.
In Sydney that morning after the bronze playoff, media people like myself were getting off-the-record briefings from NZRU officials about the disconnect between Mitchell and the board. One board member told me that the stonewall
Mitchell often presented to journalists sometimes went up when he sat down for briefings with the NZRU.
“He [Mitchell] was asked a harmless sort of question at one meeting, and he said he was sorry, but he wasn’t at liberty to share any details with us. We’re basically his bloody bosses, and he wouldn’t tell us.”
When the contest for the All Blacks coaching job came down to a choice between Mitchell and former Blues, Wales and Lions coach Graham Henry, Mitchell opened up to the media and, by extension, the public. A film crew was allowed into his house in Hamilton. He said he had no problem with the media and expressed shock at any suggestion he was a control freak.
“That’s a sad perception. I’m not like that in any manner.”
He made the valid point his record as All Blacks coach, with 83 per cent of games won, was at that time the best of the professional era, where the average winning ratio had been 72 per cent.
The campaign worked with the public. On Tuesday, December 9, on the Holmes show on TVNZ, 8889 people phoned in to vote on who should be the All Blacks coach. Two-thirds favoured Mitchell over Henry.
But public sentiment didn’t sway the NZRU. Returning from a morning run on Friday, December 19, Mitchell found a message on his cellphone to call Jock Hobbs. “I had a feeling it would not go my way.” It hadn’t. Graham Henry was the new All Blacks coach.
Any parallels with the 2019 situation? None I can see. Ian Foster is an open, amiable man, as are the other leading candidates, Scott Robertson and Jamie Joseph. I’m hard pressed to think of three other coaches who would be more well liked by anyone who has ever had dealings with them, and that would certainly include the people in charge at New Zealand Rugby.
Lesson No 2: Don’t ever let your guard down at the job interview. In 2001, when Wayne Smith was in his second year as All Blacks coach, a 79th-minute try by Toutai Kefu saw the Wallabies win in Sydney 29-26, which made it two losses out of two to the Aussies for the season. But there were also two good wins over the Springboks and the general expectation was that Smith would keep his job. On Tuesday, September 18, 17 days after the gut wrenching loss in Sydney, Smith was at the Brentwood Hotel in Wellington for a fateful meeting with a seven-man NZRU review panel. Most coaches, no matter how bad the season has been, know how the review game is played. They offer lofty plans for the year to come, find convoluted excuses for losses, and often offer to sacrifice players and/or fellow coaching staff. They never express doubt. Wayne Smith was different. As a player, he was renowned for his honesty.
“He wasn’t a big bloke,” his wonderfully laconic Canterbury captain of the 1980s Don Hayes once said to me, “and he wasn’t much of a tackler. But he never stopped trying to tackle. I kind of admired him for that.”
Smith the coach didn’t try to hide in a boardroom either. Facing a panel of four former All Blacks captains, Brian Lochore, Tane Norton, John Graham and Andy Dalton, plus former All Black Richie Guy, former All Blacks selector Lane Penn and NZRU chief executive David Rutherford, he told them he needed more time because at that moment he was not sure if he wanted to continue as All Black coach. “I thought they wanted me to be honest.”
Just two days later, when a report from the panel was presented to the NZRU board, Smith’s remark was translated as “he doesn’t want the job”. On Saturday, September 22, a Wynne Gray story in the Weekend Herald, obviously well sourced from inside the panel, described Smith as being diffident, defensive and downplaying problems.
A week later in the Canterbury union’s boardroom in Christchurch, a media conference was called by Smith. He explained that while he had said he “wasn’t sure” he wanted the job on that fateful Tuesday in Wellington, he had not said that he definitely didn’t want it. He was then still wrestling in his mind with the issue.
Careful to not offend the men who held his coaching future in their hands, he said he could, however, fully understand how the review panel might have thought he didn’t want it. But now he had no doubts. He was keen to continue.
Too late. On October 1 in Wellington, Smith, his assistant Tony Gilbert, Chiefs coach John Mitchell and Crusaders coach Robbie Deans were all interviewed for the All Blacks coaching job. Two days later, Smith was sacked and Mitchell appointed.
Any parallels with the 2019 situation? None I can see. Foster, Robertson and Joseph are all veterans of the boardroom process. At the time Smith was facing a panel in 2001, having a panel reporting to the board was new territory. The current crop are all articulate men, who know from experience how this show works. It’s highly unlikely any of them would muse out loud if they had any doubts.
Lesson No 3: No matter how good a player he is, or how good hearted a bloke, a superstar endorsement is no guarantee of success.
In 1991, after the All Blacks had finished third at the Cup, John Kirwan was asked who he thought should be appointed coach for the next tournament. As open and honest then as he would later be in his campaigning for mental health, he said he thought John Hart would be a good choice.
Another sincere All Black is Beauden Barrett, who when the ’19 team arrived at Auckland airport said “hopefully we can have some continuity” as he praised the intelligence of Ian Foster as a coach.
Any parallels between ’91 and ’19?
John Hart didn’t get the coaching job, which went to Laurie Mains. Barrett’s praise of Foster, like Kirwan’s backing of Hart, will have done no harm. But it’s unlikely to have any major effect on the final outcome.
Our All Blacks coaching contest now remains, as Winston Churchill said in 1939 of Russia, a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Take with a large grain of salt anyone who claims to already be certain about the final choice.