The All Blacks need to rekindle their emotional connection with fans

I’d like to see a rekindling of the emotional connection between the All Blacks and their fanbase.

If there was a journey that Ian Foster was taking the team on during his tenure, it didn’t feel as if he took that many of us with them.

I thought the team was aloof, thin-skinned, and defensive. There was an air that they were better than us, without any justification for believing so.

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Being an All Black or All Blacks coach doesn’t entitle you to deference from the rest of us. There’s no right to respect simply because you hold a position that revered characters occupied before you.

You have to earn that yourself and I’m not sure Foster ever did.

In that regard, he created a team in his own image.

If the Crusaders do one thing better than most teams and franchises, it’s play for their people.

As much as the Crusaders’ success irritates much of the rugby populace, it’s arguably their parochial supporters that stick in the craw most. The term “one-eyed’’ was just about invented for Cantabrians.

Winning stokes a bit of that, but it overlooks the lengths Canterbury and the Crusaders go to ensure their fans feel the team are absolutely representing them. That they matter and that the team would only be half as good without them.

You can’t do siege mentality as a national team. It can’t be you against the rest of the world, you can’t have a disregard for everyone outside your exclusive group.

Scott Robertson will change that and he’ll need to, frankly.

Results might not be that flash in the first couple of years of his tenure. A number of seasoned campaigners won’t be available for selection and Robertson has to sell that to his new fanbase.

If we feel we’re part of the journey, then we’re more likely to forgive a hiccup or two.

I will give credit to Foster for one thing and that’s the All Blacks’ Rugby World Cup performances.

There will always be suspicions about the degree to which he was the architect of things, once Joe Schmidt and Jason Ryan came on board, but the team did play reasonably well at the World Cup.

They had three matches of consequence, beating Ireland in one of them and losing to South Africa and France in the others. Given how badly they’ve played for much of the last four years, the All Blacks were actually pretty good in those games.

But there’s no doubt Foster has left the team in a poorer place than he found it.

Knockout

11 - 12

Final

6 - 44

SF1

15 - 16

SF2

17 - 29

QF1

24 - 28

QF2

30 - 24

QF3

28 - 29

QF4

That matters because of everything that’s sacrificed in the name of All Blacks success.

The team has to win – and be likeable doing it – to justify the dilution of every team and competition below them.

They didn’t do that often enough under Foster and there’s no point in anyone pretending otherwise.

This isn’t a coaching era I’ll remember with fondness. Too much time was spent debating Foster’s merits or the capabilities of captain Sam Cane, for instance.

There became a sense that critics welcomed the team’s losses because it justified their negative appraisals.

We need a unifying force now and a coach who can enthuse a team and rouse a nation and produce results that we can all be proud of.

We need to feel a bit like Cantabrians do about Robertson and the Crusaders.