All Blacks: Are we any closer to finding Steve Hansen's successor?

All Blacks Head Coach Steve Hansen. Photo / Greg Bowker

Just as the series between the All Blacks and British Irish & Lions was drawn, so too was there no real movement in the race to succeed Steve Hansen as coach of the former.

The sub plot to the series was the respective battle of wits between the two coaching teams, which at times moved into the forefront as there was enough said to build the perception of genuine tension existing between Hansen and Lions coach Warren Gatland.

It was a storyline that had traction - Hansen versus Gatland and yet it was more of a red herring than anything else. It was about creating theatre and - not deliberately - obscured the fact there was a genuine coaching battle of sorts playing out.

Maybe its not fair to call it a battle, but there was an intriguing chance to compare and contrast the respective styles and influence of Gatland and that of All Blacks assistant coach Ian Foster.

Intriguing because the expectation is strong that both men, former teammates at Waikato and short-lived coaching partners at the Chiefs, will be vying for the All Blacks head coaching job when Hansen steps down at the end of 2019.

The British media by the end of the tour appeared to be convinced that Gatland had pushed his claim to somwhere near the front of the queue.

That's the British media for you, though. When the disaster they expected never arrived, they elevated Gatland to near Messiah status.

What Gatland did do was confirm what everyone in New Zealand already knew - that he is a good coach. Experienced, steady and respected by all. He selected his test teams well - or rather he made astute judgements on how to fix the problems that arose in the first test.

He had the Lions well organised, motivated and at times they genuinely surprised with their attacking thrust. Ultimately they didn't lose the test series and that fact alone puts a big feather in Gatland's cap.

However, for all the obvious success, there were a few oddities that arose and no doubt caused a little alarm among New Zealand Rugby officials.

Gatland's tetchiness about the perception teams coached by him play a specific style of rugby was hard to understand.

It was also a touch absurd and perhaps deliberately self-protective to claim early in the tour that the New Zealand media were running a coordinated campaign to personally victimise him.

That Lions were awful in their first two games and it seemed as if the local media were being berated for not conveniently glossing over this fact. Analysis, perhaps harsh at times, was interpreted as wider negativity of the whole tour and wider concept and the Lions too readily recast themselves in the role of victim.

But these peripheral matters are likely to be rendered moot by 2019 as the bigger impediment to Gatland taking over the All Blacks has nothing to do with his coaching credentials.

In a 20-plus years of coaching at the highest level, he's only worked in New Zealand for two. He hasn't been on any pathway, given any long or loyal service to the game here and while he is a proud New Zealander and New Zealanders should rightly be proud of him, he simply hasn't punched the clock in this part of the world.

And that is a problem not just for Gatland but for a few other possible candidates for the role when it becomes available.

Joe Schmidt is clearly a smart and effective coach. He's equipped with multiple qualities, but like Gatland, he can't necessarily say he has given his best years or the majority of his years to New Zealand.

He left for France in 2007 after short stints with the Bay of Plenty and Blues and its this question of longevity of service, of commitment to the domestic pathway, that the New Zealand Rugby Union is going to have to consider at length.

Schmidt and Gatland sit in contrast to Graham Henry, who was the first man to coach another international team then be awarded the All Blacks job.

Henry coached at the top level for close to 20 years before he shifted to Wales, largely because he felt that was the best, perhaps only way he could gain the international experience he would need to make an improved bid to coach the All Blacks.

Doing the time in New Zealand is critical to validate the system; to protect those coaches who commit to progressing from Mitre 10 Cup, to Super Rugby to All Blacks.

Making that last jump is the hardest because the pyramid is at its most narrow at the top, which is why the likes of Henry and Robbie Deans took international jobs elsewhere when they felt their respective paths were blocked after they had given extended service in provincial and Super Rugby.

This is, of course, where the case for Foster is strongest. He has progressed almost as the flow chart is set up - coaching at club level, then Waikato, progressing to the Chiefs and then taking the role of All Blacks assistant.

He'll have close to 20 years service in New Zealand by 2019, with eight of those having been with the All Blacks.

That, in itself, doesn't make him the strongest candidate but it will leave NZR having to make an extraordinarily compelling case to pick someone from outside the system ahead of him.

Where there are questions for Foster to answer is in his readiness to graduate from his assistant role to being a head coach again.

Since he came into the All Blacks in 2012, he's made a valuable and significant contribution. He's found himself in the role - been able to use is tactical expertise and astute analysis to build effective attacking structures.

Players have come to value him and his relationships within the team are strong and built on mutual respect.

In relation to the series against the British & Irish Lions, the suggestion the All Blacks were out coached is hard to make stick. Their attack game was a failure of execution rather than planning and Foster can feel satisfied that if a few more passes had stuck as they should have in the third test, all the coaching plaudits would have been going his way.

The role of assistant is not that of the head coach, however, and Foster's time at the Chiefs between 2004 and 2011 was not marked with any great success and the club became known as the country's great underachiever.

Perhaps his skills are better suited to being an assistant and the head job won't suit him, but then again, similar arguments were put forward about Hansen and they proved to be spectacularly wrong.