OPINION
Working well with others
Jason Ryan and Scott Robertson were able to amicably negotiate Ryan leaving the Crusaders to assist Ian Foster in the All Blacks. That smoothed the way for Ryan to then move easily into Robertson’s All Blacks coaching group.
It was the sort of emotional intelligence Graham Henry showed when he returned from a brutal time as the coach of Wales and joined Wayne Pivac and Grant Fox with the 2003 Auckland side, who won that year’s provincial title. “It worked because we all make sure our egos didn’t get in the way,” Fox told me at the time. “Wayne and I knew that if we were successful a lot of the credit would go to Graham, and so it should.
On the other hand, Graham showed he was very willing to work with a coaching team, when he wasn’t the one in charge. Henry would forge a rock-solid coaching team that took the All Blacks to the 2011 World Cup title.
Always looking for improvement
Sir Wayne Smith has been a key figure in Robertson’s rugby career, from the time Smith took over as Robertson’s coach at the Crusaders in 1997. Like Smith, Robertson has never been afraid to look outside the square. When Smith was first coaching the Canterbury sevens team in 1989, he had to pretend that mental skills expert Gilbert Enoka was the team masseur. (That ruse was almost blown when, to fool a conservative, old school official, Enoka, told he should have massage oil at a sevens tournament, hastily bought a bottle of peanut oil.)
For Robertson, whether using music as a means to team bonding, to sending his Crusaders assistant Tamati Ellison to study defensive patterns at the Melbourne Storm, the net for success has always been cast wide.
Relatability with players
On the surface they appear to be very different personalities, but Sir Steve Hansen, a laconic former cop, had the same ease with players Robertson has. As one of the most astute players of the Hansen era once told me, on the promise of anonymity: “Steve’s a very bright man, and he never forgets that no matter how much they’re paid, the All Blacks are still hairy-arsed rugby players. He can communicate in ways they understand.”
Hansen was also secure enough in his own masculinity to point out that kindness wasn’t a sign of weakness. Players sometimes needed a kick, he said, but sometimes they needed a cuddle. “You can’t do a lot of damage cuddling someone.” Robertson? Explaining his philosophy last year he said: “If I provide enough care for players, they’ll care about themselves, they’ll care about their performance. That approach makes you accountable, but there is a lot of love in it too.”
Electric energy
I’ve admired and liked many All Blacks coaches over the decades. J.J. Stewart in the 1970s for his ribald sense of humour. Jack Gleeson, who took the All Blacks to their first British Isles and Ireland Grand Slam in 1978, for his quiet intelligence. Sir Brian Lochore for his warmth and generous spirit. But until Robertson, nobody had the sense of barely contained energy that the great, unbeaten, Fred Allen radiated.
Meeting Allen when he was coaching the All Blacks, and I was a nervous teenager, he almost scared me to death. But in the 30 years before he died in 2012, we caught up regularly and I was lucky enough to see the genius behind the often stern mask. Allen had a massively positive belief in his methods that’s mirrored in the fact Robertson wasn’t kidding when he said that every day he headed in to coach the Crusaders, the prospect put him in a good mood. A willingness to think outside the square is another characteristic common to both.
Robertson has always been unafraid to express himself, which probably spooked some on the selection panel when he applied to follow Hansen as national coach in 2019. The New Zealand Rugby Union boardroom kings of the day were apoplectic when, in 1968 in Australia, Allen let a journalist, Alex Veysey, sit in on a team talk before a test with the Wallabies. Breaking moulds usually involves risks. But when the pioneering is guided by the right people, as it was with Allen and, I believe, will be with Robertson, the rewards can be hugely worth taking the chance.
