New Zealand Rugby confirm Scott Robertson's All Blacks exit

Lessons

1. If, as AB coach, you are not No 1. in the world you are on very thin ice. Even being second, with the second best win ratio in test rugby in your time in charge, isn't good enough.

2. If you are ex-Canterbury, you are on even thinner ice. Just ask Wyllie in 1991, Smith 2001 and now Robertson 2025 and compare the way they were treated in comparison with Mains 1994, Hart 1998 and Foster 2022. Canterbury coaches really just need to stop being naive and pretending they will ever be AB's coach [Deans] or kept if they are.

3. NZR will never appoint another head coach without extensive international experience, particularly as a head coach. Won't be for England, SA or France of course, so if your keen, get in line for Scotland, Wales, Italy, Australia and Argentina. Maybe Ireland as well if they keep going downhill. Be interesting to see if no NZer can get one of those gigs, though. NZ domestic coaching will end up being gutted, little more than a way point to a career elsewhere in the world, as it is in Australia.

4. The players are in charge on NZ rugby. NZR is too scared and stupid to put them in their place.

5. NZR don't really want to solve the real problem with NZ rugby, which is the fact the SR teams don't play season long, only 60% of the time, with the balance taken up by the third tier NPC. This exacerbates the problem with player development, which outside the Crusaders and the Chiefs is dismal.

He must have lost the locker room. Fozzy had been under immense pressure - results wise - but the players were vocally backing him up.

When I read, that senior players are very dissatisfied, and Ardie Savea getting an explicit mention, I thought, that that was going to be difficult for Razor.

This is still a shock, as the expectation by the rugby talking heads was, that Hansen would be let go, and Razor would have to yield a bit in terms of the coaching team, but the NZR decided to nuke it.

Perhaps they’re trying to pull off a Rassie, but there might not be a Rassie available. Jamie Joseph ought to be the front runner.

Sick stuff.

Totally shocked to see the Golden Child of NZ provincial and super rugby has been fired. So many people expected to see his success with the Crusaders would directly translate to the test arena, but now that has definitely not proven to be the case at all.

I don’t think the results were necessarily bad because the record is pretty damn decent, but what was bad was the manner in which they lost. The loss to South Africa in Wellington was a complete farce, and the loss to England last year was very disappointing. Some of the selections were downright confusing at times (juggling the back row around too much, and decisions around the centres being up in the air too often).

Hopefully some of those assistants like Scott Hansen go with him!

I’m happy about this if it’s true. I really wanted him as the ABs coach but he has disappointed beyond what I thought was possible. I think he has failed as a HC to unite the team of coaches around him, which is evident by the guys who left, and it looked like he had lost the players after the RC. I never liked how he blamed losses on player execution amd claimed wins as game plan successes.

No point waiting another year.

NZR showing that the All Blacks position is in fact a high performance role. After that England match, this comes as no surprise.

Not an obvious call, based purely on results. But with what seems like a player revolt behind the scenes, it may have been unavoidable.

I thought Razor was going to get the train back on the tracks. Harder to do with Rassie in the mix, of course.

Short runway to the RWC, for NZ. Its going to be interesting.

The total opposite of how Foster behaved in the same circumstances, I still wonder if we would have had Razor lifting the Cup if the same thing had of happened in 2022.

I have to admit even with all Razors failings, selecting proven failures, not using his bench, refusing to rotate players and bench use, and general stubbornness and/or belief in what he was doing and how, I didn’t think it would come to this.

My gut feeling is that this is the wrong decision, and if Razor had a better environment to perform him he would have been in a better head space and could turn all his failures into strengths. I do wonder if Kirk has what it takes to fix those problems after he has come to this decision.

There must be a lot to come out that we don’t know about. I guess if he lost the leaders in the team he wouldn’t be able to get much cohesion. It has been showing that way by how they’ve been playing.

It’s strange because the players liked him when he was coaching the crusaders.