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International

Patrick Tuipulotu: Razor's exit sends 'cutthroat' reminder to All Blacks

Ned Lester

90 days ago

Patrick Tuipulotu of New Zealand speaks to Scott Robertson Head Coach of New Zealand All Blacks during the Rugby Championship 2025 match between Argentina Pumas and New Zealand All Blacks at Mario Alberto Kempes Stadium on August 16, 2025 in Cordoba, Argentina. (Photo by Marcos Brindicci/Getty Images)

It’s a cutthroat, high-performance world for the All Blacks, a fact made chillingly clear by Scott Robertson’s dismissal, and one that has clearly reverberated throughout the player group.

For veteran lock Patrick Tuipulotu, the news of Robertson’s departure has left an interim leadership gap that needs to be filled, and he sees the players as the most appropriate candidates to step up.

It remains unclear how long the appointment process for the new head coach will take, but a precedent has been set that extends beyond the coaching group, says Tuipulotu.

VIDEO

“There’s indecision at the moment, especially with the head coach vacancy. I suppose it’s a chance for the players to step up and keep the group gelled,” the 33-year-old told reporters at the 2026 Super Rugby Pacific season launch in Auckland.

“There’s a lot of unknown. It’s interesting times. For myself, not knowing what’s going to happen is the uneasy bit.

“However, in this day and age, high-performance sport is really cut-throat, and this just shows how cut-throat it is. It just means we need to be on our game a bit more.”

The Blues captain says an All Blacks team Zoom call shortly after Robertson’s exit was confirmed provided some clarity on the situation and re-centred the players on the immediate task at hand, the Super Rugby season.

In the meantime, New Zealand Rugby will continue its work behind the scenes, as it did over the summer period with the now infamous, and still mysterious, 2025 season review.

When asked whether he thought change was needed in the All Blacks coaching group, Tuipulotu answered “yes and no.”

“There are always chances for improvement, and I probably felt improvement was needed. It’s hard to say because I was at home during the end-of-year tour, so I’m unsure how the dynamics were and couldn’t speak on that.”

While Blues head coach Vern Cotter has ruled himself out of the race with his recently announced two-year Reds deal, several big-name contenders remain.

“There’s a list there, but none of us know who’s on the shortlist,” Tuipulotu said. “We were asked what we want in a coach, personally, and I think that was delivered to a panel.”

Comments

7 Comments

Hammer Head 90 days ago

The list is two deep. Joseph or Rennie as Head Coach.

Although the media wants us to start talking about assistants like Foster and even Hansen.

I think the catastrophic error NZ rugby is making is that they are potentially building a coaching team around the players.

Whereas, as far as I’m concerned, the team should be built around the head coach who is responsible for:

1. Setting a playing strategy for the short, medium and long term;

2. Setting a strategy based on the Human Resources, strength and weaknesses of the players available from the national structures.

3. Selecting players, combinations of players based on the above strategies.

4. Developing the coaching team around all of the above.

5. Developing a winning culture within the team and coaching group.

These are just a few things that the head coach is responsible for. The biggest job of any other person in the team.

The players are not the most important cog, in some respects you may have players dropped or excluded because they don’t fit the strategy or the attainment of the above points.

How many times have we seen great coaches become legendary coaches for taking a seemingly average bunch of players to extreme heights?

There are TWO problems facing the ABs now:

1. Which coach is going to be able to pull all of the above off to win a World Cup in 20 months?

2. Despite having very good players at his disposal when he gets the job, will the players pull their weight and support the new coach given that they have been elevated to a status of being more important than the coach?

Tough times boys and girls.

And I can’t help but say “told you so” when Foster was swapped for the woefully inexperienced Razor.

There was an exodus of IP, structures and culture that Razor (with no international experience) had to rebuild whilst achieving a win rate of 80%.

Perhaps the ABs will surprise us all. But I wouldn’t bet my house on it.

Of course it has been done before. But all that fact does is confirm just how great that coach is!

SB 90 days ago