Gregor Paul: What Ian Foster must learn to thrive as All Blacks coach

All Blacks coach Ian Foster. Photo / Photosport

COMMENT:

There comes a point when peace has to be made with the decision to appoint Ian Foster as head coach of the All Blacks.

The process was a sham. We all know that. New Zealand Rugby royally stuffed up on multiple fronts and looked every inch pale, male and stale in the way they went about their business.

They were hindered by this archaic belief that they should wait until after the World Cup to call for applications and conduct interviews.

That decision was as arrogant as it was flawed – founded on the frankly ludicrous belief that all of the various high profile New Zealand coaches scattered around the world would hold off making decisions about their futures until December.

NZR chairman Brent Impey said on Wednesday when he spoke to the media about Foster's appointment, that the governing body had long been aware that several possible candidates began talking to other parties earlier in the year.

Hearing that simply made things worse as it implied that NZR felt that by telling everyone in December 2018 that they would recruit a new coach in December 2019, that they had somehow been pro-active.

Incoming NZR chief executive Mark Robinson and Sir Graham Henry, who led the appointment panel, have both said the process needs to be reviewed and in a world where executives and high profile figures never say anything critical, this should be read as confirmation that there are people close to the national body and within it, who can see that the whole thing was a disaster.

But a flawed process doesn't necessarily mean a flawed outcome and Foster can't be blamed for winning a process he didn't engineer.

He can't surely spend the next two years as the fall guy for an executive team that played a dud hand?

All Blacks coach Ian Foster. Photo / Photosport

If nothing else, it is futile for those who don't rate Foster or support his appointment, to rage about it for any longer. Why invest so much energy in claiming he is the wrong choice when no one could possibly know what will happen on his watch?

Sport is unpredictable and rarely makes sense and holding fixed views is a recipe for potential embarrassment. Plenty of coaches who everyone thought would succeed have failed and plenty who have been predicted to fail have succeeded.

Coaching is more art than science and it feels like too much weight has been placed on Foster's largely underwhelming time at the Chiefs and not enough light has been shone on what he did in eight years as an assistant with the All Blacks.

He himself admits that it is hard for those outside the team to know what influence an assistant coach is having, but if you look hard enough there is enough evidence to form a view.

When Foster first came into the team in 2012 he was tasked with building the attack, working mostly with the backline which at the time was run by Daniel Carter, Ma'a Nonu and Conrad Smith.

These three had won a World Cup. They had been All Blacks for almost 10 years and would be merciless if they encountered a coach whom they suspected wasn't up to it.

If Foster had been a fraud, they would have sniffed him out in minutes. Smith especially was happy to have robust debate with coaches about their plans and would speak up if he felt a bad idea was being hatched.

What these three found was that Foster had a depth to his rugby intelligence. He knew the game better than they did. He saw things before they did and it didn't take him particularly long to earn the respect of not just those three senior players, but the rest of the team.

Just as it is hard for new players to survive the All Blacks, so too is that the case for new coaches.

The environment is collaborative these days, players have their say and they know what they want. They expect the men coaching them to be flexible and innovative – to be able to help them become better players.

If a coach isn't up to it, they won't last long. The system will spit them out and so the fact that Foster lasted eight years and clearly had the respect of those he coached, is the best evidence of all that he has something to offer.

On a more tangible scale there is the try statistics generated in the last World Cup cycle. Between 2016 and 2019 the All Blacks scored a record 287 tries.

Ian Foster. Photo / Mark Mitchell

No other team in the world even cracked 200 and what may have gone missing from the collective memory bank is that when the All Blacks really found their rhythm in the last four years, they were absolutely devastating.

They hammered Australia more times than anyone can quite remember and South Africa were drilled by record margins as well.

When the All Blacks were good they were brilliant and this speaks to the vision of Foster. To say they lost their attacking edge in this period – as so many have in recent days – is to misrepresent the truth.

What is true is that they had a few games – big games – where they couldn't get their attack going at all.

But this shouldn't be seen as reason to condemn Foster. It is reason to see that his main challenge as head coach will be taking what he learned and using it to ensure the All Blacks attack consistently well rather than sporadically well.

It's not that he can't mastermind effective attack. He has just not learned the art of doing it all the time which is probably why he has already identified the need for the All Blacks to make radical changes in some areas of their set-up.

But the beauty of the process being over is that we no longer need to speculate. Foster is locked in for two years and posting snarky tweets about him and whether he deserves to be there won't change anything.

He's in. For at least two years he will be head coach of the All Blacks and perhaps the better approach is to keep an open mind and judge him at the end of next year, not now.