It's hard to know whether NZR is ready to appoint a break-dancing coach to the All Blacks. Photo / Photosport
It's hard to know whether NZR is ready to appoint a break-dancing coach to the All Blacks. Photo / Photosport
COMMENT:
Having won a third consecutive Super Rugby title, Scott Robertson would have to be considered ready to coach the All Blacks.
But the more pertinent question, perhaps, is whether the All Blacks are ready for Robertson.
Rugby is on a diversity drive, its arms open to sectors of thecommunity it previously ignored or mocked but certainly didn't embrace or welcome.
But as bizarre as it may sound, it's hard to know whether New Zealand Rugby is ready to appoint a break-dancing coach to the All Blacks even if he is a white, middle-aged male who has been waist-deep in the game since he was five.
Robertson has been wonderfully enigmatic. A coach who has done things his way, but not with any sense of belligerence or determination to be noticeably different.
He's simply been who he is and swept everyone up along the way as his journey has been fun and unpredictable.
He's been refreshingly different as any man who can still break dance in his 40s tends to be.
He's the most fascinating coach to emerge in the professional age and yet should he decide to apply for the All Blacks job later this year when it becomes vacant, it's hard to know what his chances of being successful will be.
Crusaders coach Scott Robertson breakdances following his side's third straight title. Photosport
Regardless of who else applies, the appointment panel will have a tough time working out how they feel about the man universally known as Razor.
They shouldn't, but they most likely will because he's unorthodox on a scale not previously known and the appointment of the next coach comes at a time when NZR are in the fight of their lives to fill the $30 million hole in their balance sheet.
Steve Hansen has proven to be humorous and charismatic in a way no one expected and brought levity to the role, but he hasn't celebrated winning the Bledisloe Cup by throwing himself on the ground and spinning on his back.
For everyone else brand Razor is one we can't get enough of, but NZR will be nervous that the likes of AIG and Adidas might not feel the same way if he's given the All Blacks job.
And this is essentially the potential problem for Razor – his brand may not be deemed by a financially and image-conscious decision-making panel to be a neat fit with the All Blacks brand; a brand that has been built on this notion of rigid, humourless stoicism.
Convention may win the day when it comes to the next appointment and Razor for all that he's breathing life into a game that desperately needs it and engaging a whole new audience that rugby has never previously been able to interest, might just be deemed a little too unconventional by an organisation that needs its risk-averse corporate partners to stand by the All Blacks.
Hopefully not, though, because the only thing that really matters is that Razor has the ability to preserve and indeed enhance the winning legacy and make the All Blacks a more compelling story than they already are.
Razor is an unquestionably brilliant strategist and tactician.
He inherited a Crusaders side that had little ability to attack North-to-South, only East-to-West.
Scott Roberston is the first person to win three Super Rugby titles as a coach and as a player. Photosport
He straightened them up, built a clever kicking and counter attack game into the mix all founded on the tightening of the set-piece.
When he arrived in 2017, he wasn't convinced many of his All Black-laden team were playing their best football when they wore the Crusaders jersey.
Long, gruelling seasons had instilled a mind-set of building slowly and in the heads of some players, Super Rugby had become a means to prepare for the test programme.
Eight seasons had passed since the Crusaders had won a title and Razor couldn't help but feel that his test players needed to be doing more and earlier in the season – make a more obvious statement of desire and commitment.
That he was able to refocus and regenerate so many individuals is proof that he is without doubt an astute and clever analyst of his fellow human, able to find ways to inspire and challenge his players regardless of their experience and ambition.
Success is what matters most to the All Blacks and Razor can bring that and he can bring it with a mix of new age unorthodoxy that needn't frighten or deter the corporate world but actually excite them.
Razor could open the All Blacks to a whole new audience, redefine them almost but it comes back to the question of whether NZR is ready to embrace this brave new world of allowing their most important people to truly be who they are.
