The past four years have seen mainstream media become increasingly emotive and wedded to specific ideas about former and current All Blacks coaches Ian Foster and Scott Robertson.
Storylines formed about Foster being an establishment appointment – conservative and protective of the system he partly built having served eight years as an assistant, while Robertson has been promoted as charismatic, innovative and refreshing – a man to change the established way of doing things and bring more success than his predecessor.
Foster’s tenure was portrayed as turbulent, troubled and failing to meet expectations. At the same time, Robertson’s period in charge has benefited from a contextualised narrative around the lack of experience at his disposal and the difficulties in rebuilding an All Blacks team that lost generational players last year.
But Gregor Paul puts these assumptions under scrutiny, asking whether there is any evidential basis to support the reporting lines that have been drawn, by analysing the respective experience/talent the two coaches had available to them, their respective boldness in making selections, their results and the way their employer has treated them and how that may have shaped opinions.
Was there really an exodus of talent in 2023?
A narrative has developed that the All Blacks of 2024 are facing a major rebuilding job on an unprecedented scale due to the size of the post-Rugby World Cup exodus in 2023.
Almost as early as the day after the 2023 World Cup final, media commentary has been laced with references to the enormity of the task facing Scott Robertson as he faces up to his new role without access to a host of key, experienced players that formed the core of Ian Foster’s team.
“Anyone expecting Robertson’s revamped All Blacks to brush off those influential absences [Whitelock, Retallick et al] and dominate from the off should recalibrate those unrealistic visions,” wrote ESPN in November, 2023.
“There are several points of contention and Robertson will be forced to look to youth, as he grapples with the raft of veterans hanging up their international boots at the end of last year,” wrote Newshub in June 2024.
“Robertson has inherited a team that lost a core of generational players after last year’s World Cup and he has had to begin rebuilding towards the next tournament in 2027,” wrote 1News last month.
And the justification for constantly characterising the 2024 season this way is due to the volume of players who left New Zealand after last year’s World Cup.
Gone from last year’s squad are locking veterans Sam Whitelock and Brodie Retallick, halfback Aaron Smith, first five Richie Mo’unga, flanker Shannon Frizell and long-serving front-rowers Dane Coles and Nepo Laulala.
Those seven departures have robbed the All Blacks of close to 700 caps, but the more nuanced storyline around this has been the perceived weighted impact on specific positions.
There is a supposed void at lock, a need to find a new playmaking partnership and a requirement to start again in the search for the right player at blindside flanker.
Robertson has no doubt faced a difficult challenge, but it’s debatable whether it’s any more severe than the position in which Foster found himself when he took over in 2020.
It is a reality of life that New Zealand will face an exodus of talent at the end of every World Cup and no new cycle will begin in ideal circumstances for the All Blacks coach.
In 2020, Foster had to start his campaign without Kieran Read, Ben Smith, Sonny Bill Williams, Ryan Crotty and Matt Todd, while he too had to search for a new blindside as he had also lost Liam Squire.
But there was never any media narrative to contextualise the exodus or to preface his challenge with an element of the system working against him.
And most significantly, the idea that Robertson is operating with a dearth of experienced players at his disposal in comparison with Foster, is in fact, not true.
If we look at the respective combined test caps of the team Foster picked for his first test in charge and compare it with the first team Robertson picked, the latter had more experience.
Foster’s starting XV to play Australia in Wellington 2020 had 660 caps, and his bench 217, for a total of 817.
Robertson’s starting XV to play England in Dunedin had 651 caps, his bench 333, for a total of 984.
Even the idea that there was a void at lock and a start-again mission at halfback and first-five doesn’t render true.
Foster’s nine and 10 in Wellington – Smith and Mo’unga - had a combined 109 caps between them.
Robertson’s duo of TJ Perenara and Damian McKenzie had 127 between them.
Robertson’s locking pair of Scott Barrett and Patrick Tuipulotu had a combined total of 112 caps.
In 2020, Foster started test one with Sam Whitelock and Tuipulotu, who had 147 caps between them.
However, the former picked up a head knock that game, so for the second test, the All Blacks gave Tupou Vaa’i his first start (second cap) alongside Tuipulotu, and they had a total of 32 caps between them.
Finding new blood
When Foster, who had served for eight years as an assistant, was appointed head coach of the All Blacks in late 2019, he was labelled the continuity candidate.
While promoting from within and having succession plans was once seen as a major strength of the All Blacks, after Foster was promoted, many media commentators were branding it a concept that it had been preferred for too long.
Herald columnist Chris Rattue said of Foster’s appointment in 2020: “Rather than see the All Blacks’ 2019 World Cup crash for what it was, that of a coaching regime which had lost its way, NZR turned inwards as it always has done, ignoring any popular wish and sticking with its mates.
“It was almost as if they felt so superior that the incredible semifinal mauling at the hands of England didn’t actually happen, that to break with the Steve Hansen regime would be an unfair insult to the great but overbearing coach.”
The idea grew that Foster would offer a continuation of what had gone before – largely pick the same players, play to the same patterns and adopt the same strategies as he’d learned as assistant between 2012 and 2019.
Few saw innovation or bold selecting as a likely part of his offering, and yet he had three uncapped players on the bench in his first test in charge, and seven in total in his squad – all of whom earned caps by season end.
Robertson, on the other hand, was appointed on a ticket of innovation. He was brought in by New Zealand Rugby (NZR) to instigate change – to break away from the past, find new players, build new patterns and give the All Blacks a different look and feel.
NZR chief executive Mark Robinson said this about Robertson in February this year: “He’s come into the role as we expected he would, with a huge amount of energy, a huge amount of freshness around his views around the game and how he wants to put his campaigns, teams and management teams together.
“Our role is really to support him in any way we possibly can to do that.
“We had a great session yesterday, we had the afternoon with some of his team and some of our team, mapping out some different aspects of the next few years and looking back a little bit as well. It was great to see that level of detail and just that level of passion.”
An expectant media awaited a refreshed feel when Robertson unveiled his first squad of the year.
It contained five new caps – two less than Foster picked in his first squad.
His team to play England in Dunedin this year did not include a single new cap in the 23, and it featured 12 of the same players who were involved in Foster’s first test.
Due to injuries, however, Robertson called up Sam Darry, Noah Hotham and Harry Plummer – meaning that he has now blooded seven new players since taking over.
How we perceive success
In Foster’s first year in charge, the All Blacks won three, drew one and lost two. One of those defeats was a historic first loss to Argentina.
But under any reasonable measure, it would have to be considered an unprecedented year that presented unheard-of challenges because of the pandemic.
The All Blacks only played six tests – four against Australia and two against Argentina – and their season started in October and finished in late November after a reconfigured, New Zealand-only Super Rugby.
It’s worth noting that the other defeat that year came in the fourth Bledisloe Cup test after the trophy had been secured.
Foster opted to make significant changes primarily to ensure that fringe players got on the field as the All Blacks played their last four tests in Australia under heavy Covid restrictions, and knowing there was a two-week quarantine on returning to New Zealand, the coaches felt it was important to involve everyone.
If we look at 2021 and 2022 as being fairer points of comparison, the All Blacks won 12 out of 15 in the former, and in the latter, they won nine, drew one, lost four.
In 2021, they beat the Springboks and retained the Rugby Championship with five wins and one defeat and retained the Bledisloe Cup.
In 2022, they beat the Springboks at Ellis Park, retained the Rugby Championship with four wins and retained the Bledisloe Cup.
In 2020, Foster’s win ratio was 50% (66% unbeaten), in 2021 it was 75% and in 2022 it was 64% (72% unbeaten).
In 2021, the All Blacks spent 15 weeks away from home playing 10 tests, losing the last two to Ireland then France.
South Africa, defending world champions at the time, finished 2021 with a win ratio of 61%, losing their last game of the year to England, further demonstrating how tough it was to have played the entire Rugby Championship on the road in Australia and then head straight to Europe.
But the New Zealand media’s assessment of the All Blacks’ season was unsympathetic, and categoric that it had fallen significantly below expectation.
Stuff wrote after the All Blacks lost to France: “The 40-25 defeat, the All Blacks’ first loss in the great city since 1973, has done little to douse suggestions that NZ Rugby pulled the trigger too soon – they made the news public on August 24 – when confirming Foster would stay in charge through to the end of 2023.”
And of course in 2022, two assistant coaches were fired three tests into the season after the July series was lost to Ireland – and then Foster himself came perilously close to also losing his job a few weeks later when the All Blacks lost to South Africa in Mbombela.
Robertson’s tenure to date has seen the All Blacks win six and lose three for a 66% win ratio.
They haven’t yet beaten South Africa, lost to Argentina at home and also failed to retain either the Freedom Cup or Rugby Championship – the latter being the first time in history the All Blacks have not won the competition when it has been played in full.
And even should the All Blacks win the remainder of their tests in 2024, they can only achieve a 75% win ratio – a return that when Foster’s All Blacks produced it, earned widespread media condemnation.
As a final aside, Foster’s All Blacks didn’t lose in New Zealand until his third year in charge, Robertson’s All Blacks lost at home in their third fixture.
Employer support and how it influenced media coverage
Arguably, the greatest difference between the Foster and Robertson regimes lies in how they were respectively treated by their own employer and media.
Foster was initially appointed on a two-year contract – which had been the standard way of doing things throughout the professional era.
But where things were different for Foster, was that NZR’s board did not sign off – as they typically had with previous head coaches – in extending his contract through to the 2023 World Cup at the end of his first year.
The usual pattern – unwritten agreement – was that presuming a new head coach didn’t have a catastrophic first year, his contract would be extended by two years.
But for some reason – despite the recommendation of the review panel - Foster had to wait until July 2021 to learn that he was being retained through to 2023.
There were two other significant moments, however, that epitomised the lack of employer support Foster had throughout his tenure.
After the All Blacks lost the series to Ireland in July 2022, Robinson released a statement that said: “Congratulations to the Irish team for their well-deserved win last night but clearly the performance across the series for the All Blacks was not acceptable as we know they have reflected.
“We all know there is a huge amount of work to do. Our focus now is to work with Ian and his team to understand thoroughly in advance of the Rugby Championship what is needed to improve performance and where to from here.”
The use of the word “unacceptable” created a media narrative that said Foster and his coaching team were under review – and a week later, two assistants, Brad Mooar and John Plumtree were fired.
Then, five months after holding a press conference in which NZR chair Stewart Mitchell announced that Foster was being retained through to the World Cup, it was confirmed in March 2023 that Robertson would be taking over as All Blacks coach in 2024.
It was unprecedented for NZR to appoint its next coach before a World Cup, and it meant that Foster went to France knowing that his employer had already decided he was no longer the right man for the job.
Robertson’s single most important win with his employer has been the length of his contract – he became the first All Blacks coach in professional history to be signed for four years straight off the bat.
The value of being awarded four years is not so much in the security it brings, but in the confidence it purveys, and the sense that it builds of NZR being committed to Robertson in a way they never were to Foster.
Inevitably, perhaps, the different support level both coaches have received from their employer has seemingly influenced media coverage.
Foster was rarely able to win favourable headlines for the way his team performed.
The 2021 season was harshly reviewed and after losing to South Africa in Mbombela in 2022, the Herald wrote an editorial calling for Foster to be sacked.
It said: “It’s time for an end to Ian Foster’s time as head coach of the All Blacks.
“The Herald takes no pleasure in calling for him to go but Foster – a decent man who is out of his depth in a brutal business – must exit the role, whether he is paid out to leave (as he should be), or he voluntarily steps aside.”
Robertson, on the other hand, has been portrayed as “refreshing”, “charismatic”, and “innovative”, and has willingly pushed storylines about this being a rebuilding phase to contextualise the results.
In Razor’s defence, he’s been clear that he doesn’t see it that way at all, saying ahead of the final Bledisloe test: “Part of the All Blacks is winning. You are winning and develop and you don’t develop and win which I have said before. Of course it hurts you.
“We haven’t kept that part of the legacy on and we have all owned that we can be better in different areas and also focused on what we are doing really well.
“We haven’t had opportunities to win every game, and we haven’t. There are some key parts of growing. There are some players that have come through – we have got a lot of fresh faces, seven or eight debutantes.
“There is a bit of a story to the whole point of it, but we would have loved to have the Rugby Championship as well.”
Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand’s most respected rugby writers and columnists. He has won multiple awards for journalism and written several books about sport.