Dave Rennie sends 'no loyalties' All Blacks selection warning

Dave Rennie has put forward a clean-slate selection policy for his All Blacks tenure, saying he has no pre-existing loyalties and every player will have to earn their place in his squad.

Rennie was unveiled as the next All Blacks coach on Wednesday, nine years after he left New Zealand to coach the Glasgow Warriors, then the Wallabies, and later the Kobe Kobelco Steelers.

Rennie’s final Chiefs squad in 2017 did feature current All Blacks Finlay Christie, Damian McKenzie, and Anton Lienert-Brown, but that fact was out of sight, out of mind when the 62-year-old was asked about his familiarity with the current player pool.

“Whether I was coming back to this role or not, I watch every game of Super Rugby, I watch a lot of stuff happening up in the UK, and obviously we’ve got a competition that we play in, so I watch a fair bit of footy,” the coach explained.

“I’m not concerned about having an understanding of where players are at. But I’ll watch it (Super Rugby Pacific) closely, I’ll use a bit of analysis as well, and I’ll spend a bit of time down here in bye weeks. We’ll get support staff up so we can get a lot of planning around our game model, and then get a handful of things in place so when the players come, they’re ready to go.

“I guess one advantage is players are going to have to earn the right to wear the jersey; I’ve got no loyalties, I don’t come from a team where I’ve had a lot of these guys previously. So, I think that’s really exciting. We’ll select based on form.”

New Zealand Rugby chair David Kirk said that part of the appointment process for the All Blacks coach role was consulting players, past and present, who were familiar with the candidates.

Rennie’s selection policy will also involve identifying who can best execute his game plan, a game plan the coach says is already well-formed. When asked about strategy and culture, the coach reflected on his methods in previous roles.

“I think from a cultural point of view, I want to dig down into the legacy. I think what I’ve done well in other parts of the world is I’ve done a lot of research, I’ve spoken to a lot of people to get a bit of clarity around the direction we need to head in there. There are some fantastic people I can talk to and grow my understanding.

“I’m really clear on the type of game that we’ll want to play, and the detail within that; the type of athlete we’re going to need, and how we’re going to make shifts. I’m not going to go into massive detail about what that is or the changes that we want to make, because I don’t want to throw anyone in a previous regime under the bus.

“But I can assure you that I’ve watched a lot of footy already and I’ve got some firm ideas around the shifts we can make that’ll make us better.

“I’m looking forward to ripping in. We obviously won’t have access to players at the moment anyway, so there’s going to be a big focus around planning and detail with the group once we’ve sorted that out.”