The constant in the All Blacks’ struggles is not the coaches

It’s on the senior All Blacks now.

I’m not too bothered about who New Zealand Rugby appoints as the next national coach, nor the criteria that’s been set. I mean, preferring a New Zealander who’s won some games and been in charge of a Test team is hardly a radical idea.

No, it’s put up or shut up time for the stars of this side.

You don’t like the rugby that’s been played. You don’t rate the coach or some of his staff. Maybe the captain wasn’t the guy you would’ve chosen to follow.

Fine, just be careful what you wish for.

We can debate the credentials of Jamie Joseph and Dave Rennie till the cows come home. We can float the idea of a return to the fold for Ian Foster or Steve Hansen. Heck, let’s throw names like Pat Lam and Robbie Deans into the mix.

The reason I’m relaxed about the identity of the bloke who eventually replaces Scott Robertson as All Blacks coach is because they’re largely an irrelevance.

The playing personnel isn’t going to change. The Barrett brothers, Ardie Savea, Damien McKenzie, Codie Taylor and Rieko Ioane aren’t all suddenly going to become surplus to requirements.

New Zealand has the makings of an elite Test team. The fact that it isn’t one is because of the players, not the coach.

Of the players I mentioned, injury kept McKenzie from playing at the 2019 Rugby World Cup. The rest were there that year and again in 2023.

Shall we reel off the losses to Argentina that now appear to come on an annual basis? How about the drubbings from Ireland? South Africa 43 New Zealand 10, anyone?

Hansen was a superb front man, Foster a fine coach and less able statesman than his predecessor, while Robertson appears to have struggled with both the public and private parts of the role.

But what do we — the millions of us that watch on from beyond the four walls of the All Blacks dressing room — judge these coaches on? Results, ultimately.

They’ve been inadequate for years now, regardless of who’s been in charge.

It’s not hard to catalogue potential mistakes Robertson made. Just as it takes no effort to question the calibre of his support staff or to wonder aloud about what prompted Leon MacDonald and Jason Holland to depart it.

The constants here are the same senior pros and the same underwhelming results and performances.

A new broom might sweep clean, but then I think we all assumed that ahead of Robertson’s first series in charge, against England in 2024. A new coach and coaches could invigorate the players, and we could see the team reach the potential we like to believe is still untapped.

It’s just that, beyond wholesale change to the squad, history suggests we’re just going to get more of what we’ve seen since the All Blacks’ bubble was so emphatically burst by Ireland in Chicago way back in 2016.

The decline dates back that far and has been presided over by a select group of players for most of the years since.

Well, they’ve seen off Scott Robertson. Yes, he’s gone, but they remain.

So, it’s on them now. They’re the ones who obviously thought the model was broken, and it’s up to them to fix it.

Joseph, Rennie or whoever can don a suit and tie and talk into the microphone, but it’s only the on-field actions of the players that count.

The next head coach can say and do what he likes, but in the end, he’s hostage to what the players produce on the paddock.