Foster fiasco shows leadership needs shake-up
One thing we know about Ian Foster, he’s tough. Imagine how tough you have to be to absorb everything we heard and read about him after three All Black defeats, put it aside and get the team up for a win in that roaring furnace of South African passion we saw last Sunday.
Then imagine doing all that without the support of the people in charge of New Zealand Rugby. That is the bit that has astonished me.
Rugby is this country’s most successful industry, its most recognised international brand. It is often held up to business conferences as an inspiration, a perfect model of a global centre of excellence. It exports surplus fine players and coaches to other countries, setting the standard and style of the game worldwide.
The Irish, French and South African sides that have upset New Zealand over the past nine months have done so playing a much better brand of rugby than the stodge they produced before they saw the All Blacks of Sir Graham Henry and Sir Steve Hansen. Better competition is something to celebrate in any industry, it is better for the best.
New Zealand’s global leadership in rugby, I’d imagined, must be underpinned by administrators of the highest calibre — smart, seasoned corporate managers who knew how to run organisations, select the best people, give them high expectations, fair incentives and all the support they need to succeed.
If that was true, it is not now. The people running New Zealand Rugby these days have shown themselves to have feet of clay. In Foster’s hour of victory last Sunday he said he had “no idea” whether he would be coaching the All Blacks in their next match and, when NZR chief executive Mark Robinson was asked he hedged, saying they would “review” the coach’s future this week.
They did so on Wednesday and went to the other extreme, confirming Foster’s appointment right through to next year’s Rugby World Cup. Unable to express any confidence in him previously, they gave him their unequivocal endorsement on the basis of a single victory.
They appear as fickle as fans and critics who swing from the depths of despondency to the heights of rapture on a result that can ride on a finicky referee.
The Foster fiasco is not the first time recently that our rugby organisers have looked like amateurs in the business of professional sport. They were going to sell a stake in the All Blacks’ commercial earnings to an American private equity fund with only a vague idea of the investor’s intentions.
The board and the provincial unions treated Silver Lake’s offer as a sorely needed hand-out to them rather than capital that needed to have a clearly stated purpose capable of earning the return the investor would receive.
The players held out for a better deal and, last week, it was they who supported their embattled coach.
If, as reported, it was Foster’s suggestion that his performance be reviewed at this stage of the season, it must have been to stay the axe following the losses to Ireland and to France last year. But it was not a suggestion the board should have accepted.
If their confidence in the coach was low enough for him to make the suggestion, they should have fired him at that point. Alternatively, if they were minded to give him more time, they should have given him another full season.
The right time to replace a coach is at the end of an unsatisfactory year, not in a fortnight between matches. A call-up this week would have been unfair to the obvious replacement, Scott Robertson, but nor should he have to wait another year.
Given charge at the end of this year, Robertson would have nine months to prepare a team for the World Cup. I don’t know why that is said to be not long enough. When Hansen took over from Henry in 2012, the season was expected to be an anticlimax after the 2011 World Cup, but it was not.
Hansen brought in new players with names like Retallick, Savea and a young halfback called Aaron Smith, whose speed to the breakdown and rapid service enabled Hansen’s team to play at a pace we’d never previously seen.
When Foster took over in 2020 I hoped to again see something fresh. It hasn’t happened. His selections are unimaginative. He has persisted with players past their peak and is not using new talent well. Rivals are matching the team’s pace and beating it with defence. We need a new spark.
But more fundamentally we need professionals at head office where those making crucial decisions look out of their depth.