Coaching decision delay out-dated and out of touch with reality
The All Blacks will assemble later this month to begin an extraordinarily long test programme that will be played with the uncertainty of not knowing who will coach the team next year.
This isn’t unprecedented, but it is unusual — out of sync with the serious contenders, all of whom have their head coaches contracted to at least the 2023 World Cup.
This vote of confidence, however, has not been extended to Ian Foster and his group — all of whom are contracted only until the end of this year — and the All Blacks remain the only major team in world rugby to not know who will be at the helm in France.
The Weekend Herald understands New Zealand Rugby intends to wait until December to determine whether to give the incumbent group another two years or make the role contestable.
What Foster’s team will have to deliver to win an extension is unknown. And making the situation yet harder to predict is that it is unlikely to be just results that dictate the future.
It is also understood the dedicated rugby committee tasked with reviewing last season recommended extending Foster’s contract beyond this year.
NZR’s board, however, were concerned the review identified that some of the wider coaching team struggled at times to cope with the step up to test rugby and deal with the pressure.
A return of three wins, a draw and two defeats combined with the question marks raised in the review, led to the board opting to hold off and agree they need a stronger evidential basis this year to be certain they have the right group to take the All Blacks to the next World Cup.
That the All Blacks are doing things differently to everyone else is usually something to celebrate and admire but the desire to leave coaching appointments until season-end seems more outdated, archaic even, than innovative.
It is not just out of sync, it is out of touch; removed from the realities faced by contract workers — as the majority of the coaching group are — that they need certainty about their next job months before their existing contract expires.
It is hard to fathom why this fact has not yet been absorbed, as NZR was roundly criticised in 2019 for waiting until after the World Cup to decide on their next coach to replace the retiring Hansen.
The harshest critic was Graham Henry, who led the reappointment panel that gave the job to Foster. He said it was a “cock-up” to wait while coaches such as Dave Rennie and
Jamie Joseph were snapped up by Australia and Japan long before the All Blacks job even opened for applications.
The inconvenient truth about coaching appointments is that they require, to some degree, a leap of faith. There comes a point when the dangers of waiting outweigh any benefits.
It’s hard to be sure what NZR feels it is gaining by delaying its decision. There is a real risk that some members of Foster’s coaching team may be targeted by international or overseas club sides. And it will be hard for some to say no, as the certainty of a two-year contract elsewhere against the uncertainty of their fate with the All Blacks will be hard to resist.
It also has to be realised that changing the head coach at the end of this year will mean changing the assistants and auxiliary team, too, and this new group will inevitably struggle in their first year the same way the existing team has.
Institutional knowledge is invaluable and so if the reluctance to reappoint the current team stems from concerns about the readiness of the assistant coaches, then it is nonsensical to discard them later this year and bring in yet more new assistant coaches.
The truth NZR’s board seem reluctant to accept is that they need to double down and back Foster and his coaching team to take the All Blacks through to the 2023 World Cup.