Robbie Deans has success written all over him

Robbie Deans was the most successful coach in Super Rugby.

Watching Robbie Deans lead the Barbarians to a good win over a strong Ireland side made me think - we could do much worse than getting him back into New Zealand's coaching system.

People probably forget he's never been the All Blacks' head coach. As an assistant under John Mitchell, Deans never had a chance to step up from his Crusaders coaching career, where he was the most successful coach in Super Rugby history.

I know there was a lot of fall-out from Mitchell's tenure. It was a mess after 2003, put it that way. But, after being unwanted by the NZRU, Deans was a lot more successful as the Wallabies coach than people give him credit for. Australia were No2 in the world for most of the time and he had a 60 per cent winning ratio with them. I guess it is reasonably low, but his biggest issue was that he coached against the All Blacks 18 times and he won only three.

That's not ideal, and if you want to be a successful coach and stay at the top you can't have a record like that against one team. But no one was beating the All Blacks in that period.

Since then, Deans has gone on to coach Panasonic in Japan and they've won in the two years he's been involved.

He's got success written all over him and, with the current exodus of coaches we've got in this country, I think we should welcome Deans back. He's a young coach - he's only 55. And, more importantly, he's always been successful. If we want to continue to progress when we lose a lot of experienced players at the end of the year, a guy like him coming back into our coaching system would be a positive.

Does he go back to Super Rugby or does he go into the NZRU system? Where the role is, I'm not sure. But we're very quick to be dismissive of our coaches when we do need them.

I certainly don't think we should shut the door on Robbie Deans eventually coaching the All Blacks. He's a passionate New Zealander - yes, he coached the Wallabies, but he's a professional. The NZRU didn't give him an opportunity so, as a professional, he opted to ply his trade overseas.

He was a great All Black and I know he's got the motivation and passion to coach the national team.

I think in the future there should be an opportunity for him to do that.

There's too much knowledge and too much success entangled in Robbie Deans for us to fail to harness it.