Ian Foster and his coaching team face an uncertain immediate future. Photo / Photosport
Ian Foster and his coaching team face an uncertain immediate future. Photo / Photosport
OPINION:
Ian Foster is perhaps the only All Blacks coach in history to have walked out of New Zealand Rugby headquarters expecting to greet the cheering masses on the day he was appointed, only to be confronted by an angry mob with their pitchforks and burning effigies.
At least halfthe country, if not more, have sat somewhere between sceptical and outraged that Foster was appointed in late 2019 ahead of Scott Robertson.
It was a two-way contest back then – sold as a choice between persevering with the establishment candidate or ending all ties with the 16-year Graham Henry-Steve Hansen era and promoting the enigmatic Robertson who had proven quite the alchemist at the Crusaders.
Foster was the vote for succession and continuity, Robertson the man to signal a new era – to win the hearts and minds of Generation Y and Millennials.
At the core of all this sat a fundamental question of whether Foster was being promoted from within a system that had been largely brilliant but was by the end at least cracked if not broken; and whether Robertson, seemingly a touch unorthodox and non-conformist represented too great a risk on account of that and his lack of experience in the test arena.
How this fight for the All Blacks coaching seat has been framed, remains all important now that the national team find themselves in a series decider against Ireland, having lost three of their last four tests, and four of their last eight, just weeks after the Crusaders collected their sixth consecutive (proper) Super Rugby title.
For the last two years the Foster versus Robertson saga has raged, but only as social media fodder for the polarised fringe.
The heat is on the likes of Ian Foster (L) and assistant coach John Plumtree. Photo / Photosport
But the loss in Dunedin has forced a need for this debate to be taken out of the Twittersphere and held in the boardroom once the All Blacks return from South Africa in mid-August.
The accumulation of losses and the nature of the defeat in Dunedin, which was so chaotic, so devoid of structure and clear strategic intention, should compel the NZR board to formally consider their coaching set-up through to the World Cup.
We have reached the point where to do nothing is now a greater risk than to change something, as there is a case to be made that core technical failings - such as inaccurate cleanout work at the breakdown, passive ball-carrying and predictable running lines off the ruck - are happening so often as to be considered habitual.
Even should the All Blacks win the series this weekend, there is enough of a statistical and evidential basis for the board to ask whether all those within this current coaching team can be retained.
To not do so would be remiss, because a team with the highest aspirations in the world game cannot endure volatility of performance indefinitely.
Dunedin was not a singular event, more the most pronounced variation of a particular and recurring theme and has added significant weight to the prospect that there was indeed a crack in the established system inherited by Foster and that he doesn't have the resource around him to be able to fix it.
This is where context becomes imperative. The narrative has been shaped as Foster versus Robertson, but it has never been thus.
Not entirely, or so simplistically, as success in test rugby is not determined by the strength of the head coach alone, but the quality of people around him.
The game has become too complex, detailed and micro-analysed to be framed through a lens which only sees Foster and Robertson and ultimately, what won the former the job in 2019, was that he put together the more convincing wider coaching group.
And so while the NZR board may yet, depending on the next three results, have to seriously consider a wholesale coaching clean-out, the less dramatic option of firing and hiring an assistant or assistants may prove to be the more effective catalyst in redirecting and rejuvenating the All Blacks 14 months out from the World Cup.
Can the addition of Joe Schmidt to the coaching and selection team help boost the slumping All Blacks? Photo / Photosport
Joe Schmidt, the former Ireland coach, is already joining the team as a selector/analyst after this series, but the continued inability of the All Blacks forwards to consistently deliver the required cohesion, ferocity and intensity suggests that this remains the integral issue after being identified as such in the 2021 season review.
Judgement day is three tests away so maybe the Disaster in Dunedin will prove to be an aberration, an outlier to not only the relatively polished work produced at Eden Park, but also one that ends up bearing no resemblance to what we see in Wellington, Mbombela and Johannesburg; thus convincing everyone that quality performances are being driven on the back of good management, rather than good luck.
But any hint of All Blacks fragility in the next three weeks and the board will have no choice but to ask whether that one specific problem can only be fixed with one specific change in personnel.
