This time last year, the Blues, Hurricanes and Crusaders were forced to start looking for new head coaches as their incumbents announced they were going to be with the All Blacks in 2024.
The Crusaders, who were on their way towards collecting their seventhsuccessive championship, seemingly made a quick but considered decision that they were going to replace the enigmatic Scott Robertson with former Canterbury, Munster and Waratahs coach Rob Penney.
They had known for more than a year that Robertson - one way or another - wasn’t going to stay on beyond 2023 and Penney, stamped in red and black, had been lined up for some time to take over.
As usual, the Crusaders had everything under control - a succession plan to keep the club on an even keel to ensure it would be business as usual in 2024.
For the Blues and Hurricanes, though, it felt like there was a bit of a mad panic going on - they were scrambling to find the right person in what was a shallow talent pool.
There were stories that they were trawling here, there and everywhere, kicking all sorts of tyres but seemingly not likely to find the right head coach.
Here we are now, midway through the 2024 Super Rugby Pacific season, and it turns out that the Blues and Hurricanes struck coaching gold, while the Crusaders, who thought they had a bright, shiny diamond, may now be wondering if they have a piece of coal.
Rarely is the impact of a new coach so obvious, but Super Rugby Pacific is delivering a salient tale for the ages about the importance of clubs doing the right level of due diligence to get the right coaching staff on board.
The impact Clark Laidlaw has made at the Hurricanes and Vern Cotter at the Blues is undeniable.
The Hurricanes showed on Friday night how deep their culture and talent pool run - winning in Suva, having made 10 changes to their starting team from the previous week.
Kini Naholo celebrates his try against the Chiefs. Photo / Photosport
Plenty of other teams, including last year’s champions the Crusaders, have been caught out rotating their squad in Fiji, but the Hurricanes had the cohesion, set-piece grunt and maturity to battle though what was a deceptively tough assignment.
And this is what marks them out as potential champions in 2024 - they have a depth of understanding across the squad about how they want to play and a connection to each other which means they have heart and head alignment.
That means they can weather injuries, rotate their squad and maintain their quality.
But perhaps more importantly, Laidlaw’s arrival has seen the Hurricanes build their game around their muscularity, and now they can scrummage anyone off the park and then use the likes of Jordie Barrett, Billy Proctor and Kini Naholo to smash yet more holes in them.
The Hurricanes, a club not renowned for their durability and physicality, now look fearsome and obviously it has helped that they were able to maintain so many players this season, but there is no question that they pulled off an incredibly smart piece of business in hiring Laidlaw.
Just as the Blues will be feeling that Cotter has made an impressive impact - particularly in the way he has transformed the pack into a genuine heavyweight group.
The Blues did a Brumbies on the Brumbies on Saturday night - killing them with the power of their scrum, driving maul and endless pick and go close to the ruck.
There was nothing pretty about it but its effectiveness was undeniable, and Cotter has done what his predecessors couldn’t, turning Hoskins Sotutu into a genuine hard nut.
The Hurricanes and Blues sit one and two on the ladder because they got the right head coaches, while equally, Penney’s presence at the Crusaders has been hard to play down.
The defending champions have obviously been hurt by the loss of key players through retirements, overseas contracts and injury.
But their demise speaks to something being quite wrong at the club now - as they have suffered similar personnel loss in the past and not fallen apart.
Blues coach Vern Cotter. Photo / Photosport
They went eight years without conceding a try to a rolling maul - in the last two games they have seen the opposition score three tries through that method.
The power that defined them has been lost. The speed at which they used to transition from defence to attack is no longer there, and the certainty about where they are going to attack and how has been replaced with vague ideas of shuffling sideways or kicking aimlessly.
The Crusaders were reduced to a near shambolic state in Perth and while the execution errors - the loose carries, the sloppy passes and inaccurate kicks - can be blamed on the players, the lack of strategic cohesion and general vagueness and disjointedness with which they operated is a coaching issue.
They are now a club in distress and their position at the bottom of the table with just one win should be a catalyst for the executive and board to be asking whether they got their coaching appointment wrong.
