By Gregor Paul in Chicago
Former New Zealand Rugby chief executive Steve Tew can recall being in London some time in 2012 when he received a mysterious phone call from a supposed potential All Blacks sponsor.
It was all a bit cloak and dagger – the caller didn’t want to say who he represented but told Tew if he got himself to Stansted Airport the next day, it would be worth his while.
And it was. He boarded a private jet the following morning and was taken to Dubrovnik in Croatia, where he met Bob Benmosche, the CEO of US insurance giant AIG.
Benmosche had been parachuted into the role by the US Treasury after the Government had provided a US$182 billion ($315b) bailout during the Global Financial Crisis and the new chief loved the story of the All Blacks and thought a sponsorship would lift the morale of his staff.
“They [AIG] had been in Manchester United and this guy [Benmonsche] had found us and thought it was a great story – the winning legacy, the cultural stuff, the diversity and the men and women, it was almost perfect for what they were looking for,” Tew said in the book Black Gold.
“They wanted something that their staff could learn from and get into.”
A few months later, AIG committed to a $16 million, front-of-jersey sponsorship, in a deal that effectively began the globalisation of the All Blacks’ commercial strategy.
This was the breakthrough moment that confirmed to New Zealand Rugby (NZR) that in the All Blacks, they were holding the equivalent of a royal flush – a team with a long history of success, a strong identity and a renowned and stable high-performance environment built on a personal values system that incorporated rich elements of indigenous and Pasifika culture.
NZR had suspected (and now knew) that everything about the All Blacks appealed to major global corporations and that they could present themselves as an attractive, more fulfilling and rewarding alternative to major football clubs, NFL and NBA teams.
The All Blacks are a deeply compelling proposition, but as Tew made clear in Black Gold, their attractiveness is entirely predicated on their continued ability to win at levels no other team can sustain.
“The deepness of the legacy of the story and the long-standing success ratio, despite the World Cups ... that’s what opened doors,” he said.
“You put a slide up even in a cold call that says here is a national team that plays 10-plus games a year, sometimes more, and we win 80% of those games, they go ‘that can’t be right’. Here’s the record, and also, we are captained by a guy who has played 84 tests and lost four. Crazy.”
Tew’s words still carry considerable weight and relevance with the All Blacks just days away from playing their first game on a Grand Slam tour that will have a major bearing in determining the future of head coach Scott Robertson and his wider management team.
The All Blacks are an almost entirely different beast in 2025 to the one they were when Tew flew to Dubrovnik 13 years ago.
AIG has gone, but in its place have come Altrad, Toyota, Gallagher, Taisho, SAP and many others. The All Blacks now have annual income of $120m from sponsorship, have banked $262m of equity from US fund manager Silver Lake and are a sporting brand valued at $3.5b.
The empire is built on success. The money flows because the team wins.
But Robertson, having come into the role in 2024, has not delivered the 80%-plus win ratio which was the number produced by his predecessors Sir Graham Henry and Sir Steve Hansen – and the number which so excited AIG – and nor has he delivered in line with the All Blacks’ historical benchmark of 76%.
His record last year was 71%. This year to date he is sitting on a 77% success rate and combined, the All Blacks have won 74% of their total games on his watch.
These figures are neither overwhelmingly convincing nor catastrophic, but they could be pushed closer to one of these two poles by the end of the year.
Four wins on the road will lift the 2025 ratio to 85% and the combined total to 77%, whereas two victories will see the 2025 figure drop to 69% and Robertson’s overall record sit at 70%.
If the All Blacks come home having won all four games to secure a Grand Slam, Robertson’s future will be secure. His numbers will stack up to say he’s the right coach to take the All Blacks through to the 2027 World Cup.
Anything less than that will mean the All Blacks finishing a second consecutive year without a big-ticket campaign victory and without having met the historical 76% benchmark.
What, then, does success potentially look like for the All Blacks on their Grand Slam tour?
As much as the All Blacks’ raw numbers clearly matter to NZR and form such a big part of the brand pitch, it’s apparent that internally they are not used as the exclusive measurement of success and nor are coaches given prescribed or explicit victory targets as such.
It may suit the lay narrative to say that there will be pre-determined outcomes for Robertson depending on whether the All Blacks win four, three, two, one or no games on tour, but NZR’s high-performance world doesn’t roll like that.
When Robertson’s predecessor Ian Foster had presided over a period between late 2021 and early 2022 in which the All Blacks lost four of five tests, NZR chief executive Mark Robinson and general manager of professional rugby Chris Lendrum came to his house to lay out expectations for the upcoming two-test series in South Africa.
“Almost the instant Robbo and Lendo arrived, I could sense the pressure they were under,” Foster wrote in his biography, Leading Under Pressure.
“They went through the checklist of how I was. And once they got through that, they came to the point: things had to improve, and if NZR didn’t see some really good results from the All Blacks in Africa, then there would be some changes.
“‘What does that mean?’ I asked. ‘What does “good results” actually mean?’ But they could give me no detail – they just wanted ‘improvement’. Nothing specific or measurable was outlined.
“If I wanted to remain the coach of the All Blacks after we got back from South Africa, I had no idea whether I needed to win one test or both. Or if ‘improvements’ without victories would satisfy them. As was becoming customary, it was vague communication that didn’t give me or the team the answers we needed.”
That said, however, this tour is ideally set up for the NZR board to have formed an undeclared expectation that it is a non-negotiable minimum for the All Blacks to beat Scotland and Wales and one of Ireland or England.
It seems likely that if the All Blacks lose to both England and Ireland it will trigger the board into a deeper than customary review of the Robertson set-up and tenure to date.
That wouldn’t necessarily be terminal for him, but if the All Blacks don’t beat Ireland and England, they are going to need to deliver in other areas – to strengthen the case to suggest that retaining the current coaching group will soon yield better results.
The most damaging statistics to come out of the Rugby Championship were the two which showed that the All Blacks have lost, almost entirely, the art of counter-attacking and with it, their famous final-quarter surge.
The Springboks scored 13 Rugby Championship tries from counter-attacks this year – which was 48% of their total – while the All Blacks only scored two counter-attacking tries (9%).
The All Blacks were also -17 points against the ledger in the final 20 minutes of each game.
This propensity to leak points in the last quarter of games is a new vulnerability under Robertson and one in contrast to the teams coached by Hansen, which were famous for running opponents ragged in the last 20 minutes of games.
For Robertson and his coaching team to strengthen their case to remain in their posts, they have to produce a positive points return in the final quarter of each game and rediscover the art of effective counter-attack.
This drop to the bottom of the counter-attacking table indicates the wider issue that the All Blacks have lost their identity under Robertson. In his two years in charge, it has never been clear or consistent what style of rugby the All Blacks are trying to play.
There is nothing discernible or quintessential about their rugby – no succinct way to sum them up and understand who they are and what they are doing.
Potentially, then, two defeats could be tolerable if the All Blacks deliver an exciting and consistent brand of rugby that demonstrates Robertson’s strategic vision and gives the team a strong and more obvious identity.
The importance of the All Blacks forging a clear and compelling style is a big part of the commercial pitch, NZR chair David Kirk told the Herald.
“We are going to be a team that people say, ‘I love how accurate they are. I love the way they carry themselves’,” Kirk said.
“‘I love the way they communicate their culture and their love of where they come from and who they are as people through the way they play rugby. Most of all, the way they play and our style of rugby’.
“The All Blacks have played a style of rugby for a long time now which is world-leading. One thing you have to do is win. We have to maintain our winning ratio over time. And we have to do it in a way that we have always done.”
When the All Blacks were at their best between 2010-2019, there was a clear and considered plan around selection and how and when new and peripheral players would be introduced.
The art was winning in the now but also evolving the team so it would still be winning in the future. There was a seamlessness to the way the All Blacks phased emerging players in and fading stars out.
Robertson’s selection policy has felt more haphazard and hopeful than strategic and considered.
Quinn Tupaea revealed he had trained on the wing on the Monday before the All Blacks’ test against Australia in Perth and was the next day named at centre – a position he hadn’t played for six years.
Rieko Ioane began the year listed as a midfielder, was relisted as a wing for the Rugby Championship and is now considered a centre/wing, while (lock) Tupou Vaa’i turned up in camp in July and was told he would be playing blindside.
None of this by itself triggers significant concerns, but combined with other decisions – such as Robertson opting to play his top team for a fourth consecutive week last year against Italy, the retention of the underperforming Sevu Reece and the continued chopping and changing of the back three – has led to an erosion of confidence in the notion that the team is being picked and developed with a specific vision in mind.
If Robertson can settle on a preferred loose trio, midfield and back three – providing a definitive sense that he knows his preferred combinations and best ways to use the bench to adapt them – it would settle the developing uneasiness that he’s spinning a roulette wheel, hoping his numbers come up.
The win record is the factor that makes the All Blacks such a compelling proposition for big corporations looking for a commercial relationship with a high-profile sports team.
But what also gives major investors confidence in the All Blacks is their steadiness and calm. The All Blacks have not normally had a volatile or unpredictable environment. Until 2022, there had been no culture of firing coaches still on contract.
But in 2022, two assistants were let go with two years still to run on their respective agreements, and on Robertson’s watch, Leon MacDonald quit as an assistant five tests into the tenure – and now Jason Holland has announced he will be moving on after the Grand Slam tour.
Holland is off contract at the end of the year but hasn’t sought - or been offered – a contract extension, and the fact that 40% of the original coaching team have effectively moved on prematurely hints at there being some confusion and tension within the group.
Questions have been raised by several analysts about the structure, the respective jurisdictions of each coach and the level of collaboration with senior players.
Sponsors don’t like this sort of turbulence as it runs contrary to what they think they have bought into.
This week in Chicago, the newest All Blacks sponsors’ chief executive J. Patrick Gallagher jnr told the Herald about one of the reasons his firm, Gallagher Insurance, bought in: “I’m a strong believer that culture, in my opinion, is probably one of, if not the leading ingredients to the success or failure of any human enterprise.
“I would say that includes your family. I’ll say that to people and they look at me like ‘what?’ I go, ‘yeah, how’s the dinner table?’ and they get it,” Gallagher said.
“How you are going to behave yourself among each other and be able to call each other out: ‘That’s not our culture, don’t do that’.
“When you see that and believe it like I do, then you’re looking for things that align culturally.”
Only those inside the team will know the true level of cohesion within the coaching set-up, but one external factor to monitor, which will provide some kind of indicator, is the form of players such as Reece, Ioane, Luke Jacobson and Anton Lienert-Brown.
Reece and Ioane in particular have battled for form – the other two have barely been sighted – but Robertson said the onus was on him and his coaching team to get players back to their best on the Grand Slam tour.
“We know what he can do when he’s at his best, and ourselves as a coaching group need to get the best out of him,” Robertson said of Reece.
Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand’s most respected rugby writers and columnists. He has won multiple awards for journalism and written several books about sport.