LONG READ ‘The All Blacks may not win next year’s World Cup but at least they have been better set up to succeed’

Among other reasons, the poor processes to appoint assistant coaches were core factors in why both the Ian Foster and Scott Robertson coaching eras encountered significant problems.

International coaching is a big picture production these days and the casting has to be right, or teams can quickly lose their way, as was the case for Foster’s team between late 2021 and mid-2022 and arguably for the whole 2024-2025 period that Robertson was coach.

The All Blacks have found out the hard way that poorly selected and packaged coaching set-ups go some way towards explaining why the win ratio since 2020 sits below the historic average of 76 per cent.

Now that new coach Dave Rennie has confirmed his group – Neil Barnes, Tana Umaga, Mike Blair and Jason Ryan – everyone will have a view whether the All Blacks are more likely to change their trajectory and be a better team than they were under Robertson.

It is certainly a more experienced and diverse coaching team to the one Robertson assembled. The three newcomers – Umaga (Samoa), Barnes (Fiji, Canada, Italy) and Blair (Scotland) – have all had previous exposure to international teams.

The set-up is also much simpler and conformist – Rennie is the head coach, Barnes will do breakdown and lineouts, Ryan scrums and mauls, Umaga defence and Blair attack.

The players won’t be confused about who does what and the communication is likely to be simple – something players said wasn’t the case under Robertson – judging by the first public appearance of Barnes, the man made famous by his expletive-laden cameos on Netflix’s Six Nations Full Contact series.

“I don’t profess to be a hard-arse,” he said speaking to media on the day he got the job. “At the end of the day, I’m honest. I don’t sugar-coat things, and I think the players respect that they’re going to get feedback that is honest and accurate and that I actually care about making them better. Rennie is built exactly the same way.”

But the most telling reason to be confident that the Rennie coaching group won’t fall apart the way the last two All Blacks groups have is the robustness of the process to reach this point.

In 2019 when Foster landed the job, the process required candidates to present with a team of assistants and details about what each would do.

It ended up being a little like kids picking teams in the playground, with potential head coaches talking to the same people about taking similar roles.

As Foster would write in his autobiography, Leading Under Pressure: “I disagreed with this. “NZR should have just shown confidence in the person they wanted as head coach and then worked with that person to recruit their assistants, specialists and support staff.

“To be frank, the talent pool of available coaches was not deep enough in 2019 to run the process in this way. It ended up being a little like kids picking teams in the playground, with potential head coaches talking to the same people about taking similar roles.

“It got to the point where one coach was told that if he joined my ticket, he wouldn’t get put on the other ticket.”

Foster, having lost access to his preferred assistants Jamie Joseph and Tony Brown, who made late decisions to re-sign with Japan, scrambled John Plumtree as his forwards coach and Brad Moaar to lead the attack.

Plumtree, who had spent the last few years overseeing the Hurricanes defence before being elevated to head coach, was honest that he would need to up-skill – and he was right. The All Blacks forwards lacked bite in 2020-2021 and their maul defence was a little soft.

Moaar is bright and engaging, but the step up from club rugby proved too much, and by July 2022, after poor reviews in 2020 and 2021, both assistants were let go.

Critics of Foster often say that the improvement in results after July 2022 was down to the arrival of Jason Ryan and Joe Schmidt, and they are absolutely right.

Once those two joined the All Blacks, the coaching horsepower ramped up, Foster could focus more on strategy, aligning players to the mission and be the sort of head coach he couldn’t be in the first two years of his tenure.

The cohesion of the coaching group was much better too and from losing a home series to Ireland in July 2022, the All Blacks were a goal-kick away from the winning the World Cup in 2023.

Robertson’s initial grouping never felt functional or capable of holding each other to account.

In the case of Robertson, he was appointed in 2023 with no requirement to present a wider team. What appeared to happen next was that he was able to select his assistants with little scrutiny applied by NZR.

He picked Leon MacDonald, Scott Hansen, Jason Holland and Jason Ryan. But just five Tests into the tenure, MacDonald quit, while Holland chose not to seek a contract extension.

It was an initial grouping that never felt functional or capable of holding each other to account.

Robertson’s situation was complicated further as his set-up was hard to understand – with himself operating as a self-styled culture coach, Hansen running attack and defence with Holland and Tamati Ellison (who replaced MacDonald) respectively implementing attack and defence, and Ryan in charge of the forwards.

It was convoluted – messy enough for Robertson to end up losing his job.

NZR, though, has obviously learned from its mistakes, which was why when Rennie was appointed, he didn’t have to lay out his likely team of assistants.

But it’s also why NZR said it would work with Rennie to reach agreement on who would be coming in.

When Rennie did present his proposed team of assistants, NZR pushed back on the inclusion of Blair as attack coach – not because of any concerns about his pedigree or nationality – but because the national body felt there was a strong candidate in Scott Hansen already on the books who was worthy of consideration.

NZR’s gist was that Hansen was respected by many current All Blacks who rate his ability and that Rennie should hit pause before losing his intellectual property and institutional knowledge.

The argument went that if Hansen was handed a tighter, simpler brief of running the attack – as opposed to running both the attack and defence as he was last year – he’d potentially be a strong asset.

Rennie’s decision to hold his ground is a strong indication of his mental clarity: confirmation that he’s got a firm plan about how he wants the All Blacks to train and play, aligned to a vision of who they need to be.

What it really came down to was NZR asking Rennie to evaluate two different currencies as it were. There was Blair, with whom he had a tight relationship having worked together in Glasgow and at Kobe, but someone who didn’t know New Zealand culturally or the players.

And there was Hansen, who he didn’t have any relationship with, but who was someone with an established rapport with the playing group.

Given the schedule that lies ahead for the All Blacks and how little time the new group has to prepare, NZR felt Rennie had to at least convincingly articulate why he held the preferences he did.

Rennie is believed to have duly respected NZR’s wish and he met Hansen and drilled into his rugby philosophy. But he decided to stick with Blair – a sign of two hugely important things.

Firstly, Rennie’s decision to hold his ground is a strong indication of his mental clarity: confirmation that he’s got a firm plan about how he wants the All Blacks to train and play, aligned to a vision of who they need to be.

It’s deeper than that, though, because he’s obviously worked out, in some detail, how he wants the coaching group to interact and how each assistant is going to do their part.

As NZR interim chief executive Steve Lancaster says: “He came into this process really clear on what his vision was for this team, how he wanted to lead it, and the sort of people he wanted alongside him, and we’re really happy that we’ve been able to enable him to get there.

“Ultimately, we’ve given Dave the team that he believes will help him to get the All Blacks to win the World Cup next year.”

Secondly, it’s proof that NZR is starting to see the value in cultural diversity, with the new team including four Kiwis, two of whom (Rennie and Umaga) have Pasifika heritage and a Scotsman.

This mix is a recognition of the value of cultural connection and external ideas, with Blair’s inclusion serving as a nod to the quality of attacking rugby that is being played in the Six Nations.