- Behind the scenes of Damian McKenzie’s missed bus incident and how internal conflicts impacted performance.
- Lessons learned from Leon McDonald’s sudden departure and the crucial role of veteran players.
- Reflecting on the All Blacks’ performance, future potential and learning to “speak Razor”.
It’s not the pressure of the job or the weight of responsibility he feels being at the helm of the All Blacks that keeps Scott Robertson awake at night.
It’s the constant replays of the mid-season loss to Argentina in Wellington that roam around in his head after lights out which cause a bit of tossing and turning.
Even now, more than three months since the All Blacks lost 38-30 to the Pumas in the opening round of the Rugby Championship, Robertson’s still thinking about what he could have done differently.
What he could have done better to prepare the team that week.
“That game against Argentina ... that disturbs your sleep patterns,” he says.
“I take responsibility for that. How could I have set the team up? Should have been better, could have been better and that probably has been the toughest week. We didn’t get enough right.”
What he recalls in staccato bursts, almost like a stream of short-hand consciousness, is this: “We played some good footy. We had our captain out. Going into halftime we are 20-8. Tap the ball back and it is 20-15.
“We give up a penalty after the break and then seven penalties in a row. The momentum swung. They go up 22-20 and we didn’t even miss a tackle.
“That was a true test of how small moments impact. How we could have shaped it and been better at executing.
“The effort was high. The tackle percentage was high. All the little percentages that you love were really high. But the moments we didn’t win. The game was gone.”
Why this loss haunts Robertson is easy to understand.
It felt inexplicable at the time – the All Blacks weren’t polished or ruthless in the first 37 minutes but they were mostly in control and seemingly gearing up to slice and dice in the second half, but stunningly fell apart without Argentina having to exert much pressure to induce the collapse.
There was the unforgettable moment when two wild passes saw them concede 40 metres to pave the way for the Pumas to score the match-winning try, and rarely has an All Blacks side looked so frail and committed to self-destruction.
That loss to Argentina changed the whole complexion of the season because while the Pumas have greatly improved, there is, and probably always will be, an expectation that it should take a special team and a special performance to beat the All Blacks on their home patch.
For Robertson, though, that week in Wellington cuts yet deeper because it was perhaps the result of an amalgamation of several self-inflicted pressure points converging.
There had been, as the Herald would reveal six days after the loss to Argentina, an incident after the All Blacks previous test which saw Damian McKenzie miss the team bus from San Diego – where they had been playing Fiji - to Los Angeles, that required him to take an Uber to catch the flight home.
McKenzie was forced to apologise to his teammates but the Herald is aware that senior players were angry and disillusioned that the punishment was not more severe.
They saw it as a serious breach of standards that set the wrong tone entirely about what would be deemed acceptable under the new regime.
Several people connected to the team have also told the Herald that the players felt they were bombarded with rugby content in the week leading up to the test.
They were staying at their new base, the New Zealand Campus of Innovation and Sport (NCIS) in Lower Hutt, and some players felt they were not afforded enough respite or downtime to decompress and escape from the endless analysis.
There was an unwritten rule in previous regimes that there were safe spaces in the environment – the treatment room with the long-serving and hugely popular physio Pete Gallagher – where players were off limits to the coaching staff and able to say what was on their minds without fear of consequence or to goof around without judgment.
At NZCIS that week, it has been said that there was an information overload and little recognition of boundaries, and the performance certainly reflected that the players looked flat and drained.
The following week in Auckland for the rematch, captain Ardie Savea, aided and abetted by the senior playing crew, most specifically Sam Cane, took greater control in managing those around them, and the result was an emphatic 42-10 victory.
“They were really clear with us, especially being a younger boy in the tight five, Ardie demanded physical dominance,” Tamaiti Williams said after the game.
“It’s easy to prepare when that’s all you get asked to do. The leaders lead and we’ll just follow them.”
Three days later, Robertson fronted in Christchurch to announce that by mutual consent, assistant coach Leon MacDonald was quitting his role.
Piecing it all together with the benefit of hindsight, that week leading to the Argentina loss was obviously troubled.
There was a brewing problem within the coaching group and there was a second problem that the leadership group were perhaps not as empowered as they needed to be.
By the time the team left for South Africa a couple of days after the MacDonald bombshell had been dropped, there had been a significant reset – a sense that the coaching team had been galvanised and there was greater trust and understanding between them and the players who were being given more responsibility to shape and impact preparation.
“I would say we have got the balance better,” says Robertson on how the working relationship between the coaches and players has evolved throughout the year.
“You become rugby heavy at the start naturally because people are learning new calls, new structures, so that is where the focus goes to. We have balanced out through the season.
“We have done what works for us and what works for this group and the personalities and been hugely collaborative.”
Having to speak to the media about MacDonald’s premature and unexpected departure was a personal low for Robertson, but arguably a professional high.
He handled it well. There were no prolonged whispers about any issues and even the players were caught by surprise.
The speed, cleanliness and openness of the admission that there had been a problem and both parties felt it was best to part company, meant a story that had massive intrigue and potential to simmer for months, was virtually forgotten a week later.
It was a case of fail fast, fix fast – a mantra Robertson has never publicly espoused but feels is one by which he lives.
“I have always prided myself in being able to learn quickly and having a good feel for what the team needs,” he says.
“But you still need guidance, you are not going to get everything right. We are humans. And you have to be able to look back and say, ‘Yeah I could have done this better’.
“I have got a tight group of people around me who I trust and who I draw upon.
“You know in our game if you win everything is right and if you lose everything is wrong to everyone. There are only extremes. I have to go back to what I know, what I trust, my vision and test my thinking.”
If he were to jot down a list of the most important things he has learned since he started the job, he’d say that he underestimated the time it would take to bring such a vast team of new coaches, management and players together.
Robertson presided over the most significant personnel change in the last 20 years when he came into the role, effectively sweeping out all but a few from the previous regime, while also losing a handful of great All Blacks such as Sam Whitelock, Brodie Retallick and Aaron Smith.
“From a rugby side you have a plan [before you come into the job] in your mind about how you are going to play,” he says.
“You have got your selection criteria. All those fundamentals are in place but until you realise the extent of the calendar and you start… You understand what a test week takes - the principles of a test week.
“How will your management and coaches deal with themselves personally and the players and so when it is all new – new captain as well - there are a lot of questions at the start because everyone is new and there are a lot of questions about the people and the process.
“You put a number in the top of your head about how many games before you start rolling and it took us a couple more than we planned for.”
And on much the same theme, he’d say that he perhaps underestimated the true value of experienced players. His lens was too focused on what they could bring as players, but he came to see that not only could the likes of Beauden Barrett and Sam Cane produce quality performances on demand regardless of how much rugby they had recently played, and more importantly, that they were influential leaders with the capacity to drive others and lift standards.
“We lost three, senior 100 test All Blacks,” says Robertson. “A lot of sheriffs have left town so how does that balance out?
“How do we keep each other accountable? We had a couple of tours and that fast-tracked things because you are constantly with each other, and you learn quickly and adapt.”
When he’s asked specifically about Barrett and Cane – two players he didn’t imagine before taking the job that would become such vital cogs of the 2024 campaign - he gives some insight into the extent of his long-term thinking.
Robertson is the first All Blacks coach in professional history to be afforded a four-year contract, and with that security, he’s been able to plan further ahead than any of his predecessors.
“I have got four years, and I have got my vision,” he says.
“Every coach in world rugby does… what does your team look like in four years?
“How do you win and develop now and what is the handover of the institutional knowledge? What is their experience… when you have been in this position before, what has worked and what hasn’t?
“You get a little bit of guidance, and you back your own instinct, and you build relationships, and it just takes time.”
Robertson has been criticised for leaning too heavily into the established guard this year, but there may be a masterplan behind it.
The inference is clear that Cane this year, and Barrett, for however long he can hold his form and prove his value, have a transitional role to play.
They bring knowledge and experience that can be used to set up the next generation to help them understand how to prepare for test rugby. This is arguably the greatest source of optimism about Robertson’s tenure – the emerging stars of his team are of an age that they will be hitting peak form by 2027.
This year has seen the likes of Tamaiti Williams, Asafo Aumua, Tupou Vai’i, Wallace Sititi, Cortez Ratima, Cam Roigard and Caleb Clarke establish themselves as genuine international players.
“I just love the young guys coming in and trusting their talents in the biggest stage quite quickly, so you know you have given them enough confidence and clarity to go and play good footy and back themselves.
“That is hugely pleasing. You know that your system’s right and you have the right people.”
But if Robertson had his way, the masterplan would be to not phase out Cane and Barrett and any other long-serving players who were still good enough to merit inclusion.
If he could, he’d keep including Cane, who will play for Suntory next year. If Barrett decides to leave New Zealand before the end of his four-year contract, again, Robertson would like the option to keep picking him.
It’s a hard-to-fault argument that these players could be adding as much value in 2027 as they did in 2024.
“Rassie’s [Springboks coach Rassie Erasmus] a great example,” says Robertson.
“He can take his young players to Europe to learn and grow and other ones in Japan and pick a whole group of what is required. A beautiful cohesion of youth and experience.
“Sam Cane and Ardie Savea with Wallace Siti - what a balance that is. Cortez inside Beauden or DMac (Damian McKenzie) who he plays a lot of rugby with. Those combinations, how do you set them up because it is really valuable off-field and on.
“How do you, over this next four-year period, get enough cohesion, enough experience and enough matches, how do you get enough callouses on the hands of those younger guys to be able to be at their best when it matters.
“It is a bit of a repeat for me but I want people to keep an open mind of what New Zealand rugby needs right now for the good of the game from grassroots right through to All Blacks.
“What was four years ago, three years ago, two years ago is different.
“It has changed. Not many go north - more go to Japan so how do we get the balance right to ensure that players who have given loyalty, longevity and who are still playing well, can be available. They are going, and they are going to go anyway.”
The joke inside the team, and one that Robertson himself openly acknowledges, is that the players, coaches and management have all had to learn how to “speak Razor”.
He is a good communicator, and gets his message across, but his style is unorthodox.
He often doesn’t finish sentences verbally, using, instead, a hand action or pronounced body language or facial expression to make his point.
He doesn’t like sitting down to talk – finds it easier to literally think on his feet and so press conferences are stand-ups and have been shorter and sharper than they were with his predecessors.
It’s different, but it works – you know what he means – but it’s a style that takes a little getting used to and is perhaps why so many people in and around the team informally asked throughout the last few weeks what the media take has been on Robertson in his first year in charge.
The question belies that there is intrigue about what the media has made of him stylistically, but the more relevant line of inquiry should be around the substance of his messaging.
Opinion: Razor’s work ons for the future
This is where there is much to work on because Robertson has missed a few tricks and not been as savvy a political campaigner as some of his predecessors.
The basis of his argument to change the eligibility rules is irrefutable, and his proposal to amend sabbatical clauses from one season to two is founded on logic and a deep understanding of how market trends are changing.
But in a year in which there have been few emphatic performances, his advocacy has also, at times, seemingly portrayed a lack of faith in the playing group he currently has, and the narrative has formed that the motivation for wanting to change the legislation is purely to get access to Richie Mo’unga.
Sometimes the skill is not knowing what to say, but when to say it and, by way of another example, having seen his team impacted by a series of decisions in Paris that wrongly penalised them at critical times and on four others, not give them what they had fairly won with their scrum dominance, something needed to be said publicly ahead of the Italy match.
World Rugby went through their usual routine of apologising to the All Blacks after the game for the patently wrong decisions, admitting that the referee Nika Amashukeli horribly misread what was happening at scrum time.
That still shouldn’t have stopped the All Blacks from wheeling out forwards coach Jason Ryan to make a few pointed remarks publicly to ensure that the pressure went on French referee Pierre Brousset who had charge of the game in Turin.
There is a media game to be played, one that Robertson perhaps lacks trust or confidence to play. He seems overly wary about antagonising World Rugby by talking about failures in officiating publicly, but the best coaches know how to go through the appropriate channels privately and yet also make a few pointed and telling remarks in the press.
What he says he’s learned about refereeing and its ability to impact the outcome of tests, is this: “I understand that our sport is the hardest in the world to adjudicate,” Robertson says.
“There is grey everywhere and there is going to be human error and sometimes if there is a lot of human error in a test it costs you. So try to take away the human error. Have it on your terms and I am trying to put perspective on it.”
But the constant invitations to assess how Robertson had fared in 2024 with the media, also came with a broader invitation to contextualise and assess the All Blacks season more generally.
NZR’s executive and board are hyper-sensitive to media perception, and they crave validation, particularly so in the case of Robertson, given the decision to offer him the job six months before last year’s World Cup.
It’s been the perennial question of 2024 and one that no one knows quite how to answer after 10 wins and four losses.
When the All Blacks produced 10 wins and four losses in 2009 – a season that also produced no victories against South Africa and a defeat to France – it was deemed a mini-catastrophe.
When the All Blacks won nine, lost four and drew one in 2022, two assistant coaches were sacked mid-year and the head coach was just about booted out, too.
Comparatively, then, Robertson has produced results that have historically been considered below expectation, and yet he’s also blooded enough new talent, and the All Blacks have played enough good rugby, to have fostered a degree of confidence that his team is tracking in the right direction.
As he says: “I know we have created opportunities to win every test and I know it would be a different story if we hadn’t created or if the team hadn’t cared.
“We lost a game by four points, six points, one point and if we had won 13 out of 14 the conversation is going to be different and the margins …
“I know how close we are, but I know how much better we can be.”