Kris Shannon: Role of coach hard to measure

All Blacks coach Steve Hansen. Photo / Brett Phibbs

The outcry was inevitable. The All Blacks had won the Rugby World Cup but it was hardly enough for a rabid fan base wanting to soak up every ounce of success.

In which world, the rugby public argued, did Michael Cheika deserve to be honoured over Steve Hansen? How did the Wallabies coach receive recognition ahead of the man who helmed the undisputed champs?

It's an intriguing discussion and one incredibly hard to quantify. Hansen took over the greatest rugby team on the globe and made them better. Cheika seized control of a talented but underachieving rabble and took them to the top of the game. Which man is the most valuable?

Well, to complicate the issue, is either coach more important than a football manager who spends the week fiercely espousing a philosophy and at the weekend strictly implementing the style of play? Or a gridiron guru who studies defences in one moment and executes plays the next?

It all probes at the heart of what constitutes a quality coach. When the job description encompasses so many aspects - scouting and planning, tactics and strategy, man management and motivation - it's almost impossible to ascertain who does what well.

Especially when, so often, we can glean little from results, considering separating the men on the field from the mentor in charge is an inherent difficulty. Except, that is, when it's not.

The undoubted importance of a football coach can be judged from the last five years at Manchester United. After Sir Alex Ferguson dragged a flawed squad to the last of his 13 Premier League titles, successor David Moyes piloted virtually the same squad to seventh.

Then, once the overmatched Moyes was given his marching orders, Louis van Gaal helped United regain their solidity, producing a fourth-place finish last year.

But, my God, are they boring.

The reckless abandon of Ferguson has been replaced by the methodical patience of the Dutchman, with the adjustment akin to a drag racer ceding his mantle to a chess grandmaster. The Old Trafford crowd is currently even more upset than the torrid time under Moyes, nearing mutiny in Wednesday's win over CSKA Moscow.

The merciless booing left nothing to the imagination about how van Gaal's tactics were being received, but his stubborn insistence on those same tactics also left observers in no doubt about who's the most influential man at the club.

In football, that's largely a matter of the manager's iron will, considering the players are, in theory, free to perform how they wish once on the field. But in the other football, of the American kind, that freedom is stripped, creating a complete consensus about the top dog.

Athletes are largely tools in the NFL, equipped to perform only the job required of them and rarely asked to improvise. They receive a playbook more dense than a Dostoyevsky novel and the only alterations on gameday come from the coach's headset.

It's why the New England Patriots have dominated football for more than a decade: they have, in Bill Belichick, the greatest coach of all time. Sure, the presence of Tom Brady has helped, but what happened the season the future Hall of Famer missed through injury? The team never missed a beat, running up an 11-5 record to earn more victories than in three full Brady campaigns.

It's a similar story in basketball, where savants like Phil Jackson and Gregg Popovich rule the sport no matter the playing roster. And it creates context for the debate surrounding Hansen and Cheika - both are fantastic coaches but neither is as valuable as their counterparts from the world of sport.