Rugby must tackle its coaching respect issue after Milton Haig quits - Gregor Paul

Milton Haig during a New Zealand Under-20 training session in April. Photo / SmartFrame

THREE KEY FACTS

• Milton Haig resigned as New Zealand Under-20 head coach because of irreconcilable differences with assistants.
• Haig’s departure highlights issues with respect for hierarchy in high-performance rugby coaching.
• This is the third recent instance of dramatic coaching shifts in New Zealand national teams.

Somehow, at some point in the recent past, coaching professional rugby teams became a catty business, one in which ego and ambition have seemingly been able to rule supreme.

The concept of a head coach being in charge and the undisputed governor of the team is increasingly becoming anathema to an emerging cohort of assistants and specialists.

New Zealand may have enabled a culture within its high-performance circles where there is little respect for hierarchy, and minimal recognition or acceptance that those holding assistant and specialist roles are there to implement the vision and strategy of the head coach.

This focus on high-performance coaching set-ups is a result of the surprise announcement on Wednesday that New Zealand Under-20 head coach Milton Haig, having steered the team to a Rugby Championship title a few weeks ago, has stepped down just days before the team is due to depart for the Junior World Championships in Italy.

Haig, an experienced coach who has strong provincial experience in New Zealand, was at the helm of Georgia at the 2015 and 2019 World Cups and has spent time with the Japanese club Suntory Sungoliath, said there were differences in opinion between him and his assistants about the team’s style of rugby.

He obviously felt those different views were irreconcilable and that, if he didn’t have the support of his fellow coaches (Jarrad Hoeata, Alex Robertson and Craig Dunlea), it would be best for the team – specifically the players – if he fell on his sword.

It was the honourable thing to do – a selfless act that demonstrated a recognition that ego and personal ambition can never be put ahead of the interests of the team.

But can the same be said of his assistants, who, based on the facts as they have been presented, didn’t seem to recognise that they were there to support and facilitate Haig’s strategic vision and not impose their own?

Milton Haig, when working with the US women's team. Photo / Getty Images

Haig’s actions may have been honourable, but the longer-term ramifications of a head coach sacrificing himself to appease his assistants are potentially significant and dangerous for the elite game.

Whatever happened to sucking it up? To not liking something but doing it anyway because that’s your job?

There are workplaces across the country where people won’t agree with the strategy being pursued by the boss, or don’t particularly like their management style, but they get on with doing what is required and requested because this is part and parcel of being an adult and beholden to uphold professional standards.

Rugby, to its credit, has tried to build collaborative coaching environments where assistants and specialists are encouraged to own their field, but perhaps there needs to be a re-evaluation in the wake of Haig’s departure about how far down the track they want to go in this shift away from authoritarian regimes.

There’s room for assistants to be empowered, but not so much that they forget the subordinate nature of their roles.

The best environments should operate with an element of professional friction, but not so much that the pushback undermines or disrespects the head coach’s ultimate authority.

Haig’s unexpected decision to quit is not quite the isolated act it may seem. It marks the third time in as many years that a New Zealand national team has had some kind of dramatic and sudden shift in its internal coaching dynamics.

In 2022, the Black Ferns were left scrambling to put a coaching team together only five months before the World Cup. Last year, All Blacks assistant Leon MacDonald quit after just five tests.

MacDonald’s departure was explained as a lack of compatibility between him and head coach Scott Robertson. Leaving aside the question of why this discovery wasn’t made earlier, when they worked together at the Crusaders, it does suggest that there is a creeping problem of people thinking that their ambition to be a head coach should be catered for in any role they take.

Something seems wrong with the wider culture – that there has been a failure to manage expectations, define boundaries and instil within all those entering the elite coaching ranks that teams need not only a clear hierarchy, but for that hierarchy to be recognised, respected and understood.

New Zealand’s great strength in previous eras was the ability of high-performance coaching teams to be able to disagree but commit.

Between 2004 and 2011, when the three heavyweight figures of Graham Henry, Steve Hansen and Wayne Smith coached the All Blacks, the latter two didn’t always agree with what the former was trying to achieve or the way he wanted them to do it, but they knew and respected that what they felt was ultimately not important.

It was Henry’s vision they were there to implement, not their own. Maybe now that a generation of Millennials is starting to win high-performance roles, that same ingrained respect for the hierarchy isn’t there.

Someone needs to get on top of this and restore order before every national coaching team is undermined or disrupted by the chaos that unfolds when there is confusion about who is in charge.