Words: Phil Gifford
Design: Paul Slater

There are two guaranteed by-products of being an All Blacks coach - unyielding power and unrivaled scrutiny.

The right man for the job, and/or his shortcomings polarise the nation. It's never been more evident than by the current situation.

Ian Foster was judged the right man to lead the All Blacks in 2023, but not in 2024. The process that led to Scott Robertson's appointment as the 29th All Blacks coach was the year's greatest drama in New Zealand sport.

Today, we look back on the history of the role – and who did it best.

History coaches

The fire and fury of the Ian Foster-Scott Robertson debate is no aberration, just the 21st-century version of a topic Kiwi rugby fans first passionately argued about almost 120 years ago.

How controversial was the appointment of the first All Blacks coach, for the 1905-06 tour of Britain, Dunedin’s Jimmy Duncan, who in 1903 had captained New Zealand?

The four Otago players and seven Aucklanders formed bitter pro- and anti-Duncan camps, and at the time it was “strongly rumoured” that two of the All Blacks had a fistfight in Britain over his coaching.

“Coach” would then basically be a dirty word for the NZRU for the next 40 years. After the 1905 Originals tour every All Black side until World War II only had a manager. The captain and senior players took the training runs.

It was not until 1947 that the All Blacks would have a coach again, but it was 1988 before the NZRU stopped coyly calling them assistant managers.

Coaches left out

We have updated these rankings to include Ian Foster - who was left out of the rankings when we published them before the Rugby World Cup, because that event is a crucial yardstick for coaches.

Four very good coaches, who had 100% records, are not on the list. Norman McKenzie (1947), Len Clode (1951), Dick Everest (1957), and Ron Bush (1962), all coached All Black sides for just one year, all on tours of Australia.

McKenzie was a legend as a Hawkes Bay coach before World War II, while Everest coached Waikato in the 1950s they won the Ranfurly Shield and beat the ’56 Springboks.

But context is everything here. Australia in the ‘40s and ‘50s was not any sort of force in world rugby, and beating them was absolutely considered the norm for the All Blacks, so comparing the four unbeaten men with two, three, and four season coaches felt untenable.

Also omitted is the only duo to have ever been appointed as All Black co-coaches, John Hart and Alex Wyllie. Fierce competitors, who actively disliked each other, they shared the job at the 1991 World Cup. Possibly, in a crowded field, it was the dumbest idea the NZRU ever had. The mood in the team was expressed to me by Paul Henderson after the pool game with the United States in Gloucester: “This is the worst experience I’ve had in rugby.”

Phil Gifford: My criteria

What criteria do you use to rate the men who have coached the All Blacks? I’ve relied on four areas. The win-loss record was an obvious one. The World Cup had to be a huge factor. I considered circumstances outside the coach’s control, such as another country having a golden era, or mediocre decisions by New Zealand boardroom officials. And jostling for a spot as the most important issue is what impact a man’s All Blacks coaching had on New Zealand rugby in general, from fan interest, to playing styles, to player numbers.

Here’s my list.

22. Alex McDonald
1949

The coach of the most disastrous South African tour ever, McDonald had been a 1905 All Black. According to great All Blacks prop Kevin Skinner, on the tour McDonald was “thinking 1905, but it was 1949”. To add to the team’s miseries poor McDonald, then 66, was often sick, frequently having to leave the team to run itself.

21. Ivan Vodanovich
1969-1972

A lovely guy, but he wasn’t even considered good enough in his hometown of Wellington to coach the provincial side. He did, however (I am not making this up), work with NZRU chairman Tom Morrison in their central city Featherston St menswear shop, which I guess helped the case for his All Blacks appointment. Vodanovich had a series loss in South Africa in 1970, and oversaw the first-ever series defeat by the Lions, in 1971.

20. Eric Watson
1979-80

It was Watson’s misfortune to take over from the highly successful Jack Gleeson, and then have Gleeson’s right-hand man, captain Graham Mourie, unavailable for the 1980 Australian tour when the All Blacks lost the series.

19. Jack Sullivan
1958-1960

A gifted All Blacks midfielder in the 1930s, Sullivan would become best known as the irascible chairman of the NZRU in the 1970s. As the chairman his relationship with the media, which often consisted of snarling “no comment”, made Auckland’s latest mayor Wayne Brown look like a cuddly toy. As a coach, his commitment to dour, 10-man rugby won a bizarre series against the Lions in 1959, when the All Blacks won the first test by six penalty goals to four tries. He then ran the Springboks close on the South African tour of 1960. Journalist Sir Terry McLean best summed up Sullivan: “He did not chase away the hours with careless laughter.”

18. Arthur Marslin
1953-1954

Marslin had been an assistant to the legendary Otago coach Vic Cavanagh, who, as the manager of a newspaper in Dunedin, was regarded with suspicion by the men in power at NZRU headquarters. With Tom Morrison not travelling, Marslin ran the team in Britain and France.

17. JJ Stewart
1973-1976

A Labour Party parliamentary candidate, schoolteacher Stewart — intelligent and likeable — was, as All Black star Sir Bryan Williams said, a breath of fresh air. Put his average test record down to the stupidity of the NZRU in not accepting an offer of neutral referees for the 1976 tour of South Africa, lost 3-1. The referee in the last three of the four test series, Gert Bezuidenhout, saw off the All Blacks at Johannesburg airport. When some players challenged him about what they saw as his naked bias for the Springboks, his honest, startling, reply was: “Listen boys. You can go to your home, but I have to live here!”

15. Wayne Smith
2000-2001

So, how the hell did one of the greatest coaches in the game — revered for his tactical smarts and emotional intelligence, who helped the All Blacks win two World Cups, led the Blacks Ferns to World Cup victory, and took the Crusaders in just two seasons from dead-set motherless last in Super Rugby to champions — end up so far down this list? Bad timing, and, most of all, a terrible boardroom decision. As national head coach in 2000-01, his rebuilding All Blacks had to face not a good, but a great World Cup-winning Australian side led by John Eales. Then, on the cusp of Richie McCaw and Dan Carter entering the international scene, Smith was axed after he shared some uncertainties with a hard-bitten NZRU advisory panel in 2001. “I thought,” he said at the time, “they’d want me to be honest.” If he’d lied about his feelings who knows how great his next two years to the 2003 Rugby World Cup might have been? But duplicity isn’t in his DNA.

Rope was a thoughtful, intelligent man, who reached the All Blacks role via coaching University and national sevens sides. His captain in the 1983 series against the Lions, Andy Dalton, says Rope took his first All Blacks training session for 30 minutes, and “from then on became the overseer, allowing the leaders of the players’ ‘coaching teams’ and myself to co-ordinate the team pattern”.

13. Laurie Mains
1992-1995

Mains coached easily the best All Black side to not win the World Cup. If a stomach bug hadn’t affected nine out of the 15 starting All Blacks in the days before the final at Ellis Park, I think Mains and his teams would have been World Cup winners, and he would have been jostling for a place in the top five on this list.

12. Peter Burke
1981-82

Players at the time noted the huge tactical influence Graham Mourie had as a captain for Burke, but to be fair, when Mourie wouldn’t play against the 1981 Springboks, Burke’s All Blacks still won the series.

Possibly the weirdest coaching tenure in All Blacks history. “We would have sacked him [after the 2003 Rugby World Cup] even if he’d won,” NZRU chairman Jock Hobbs would later say. Mitchell’s teams actually did very well on the field, only losing four tests (even if one was the 2003 semifinal to Australia in Sydney). But after he’d gone it was revealed his often gnomic comments to journalists were echoed in the NZRU boardroom, and eventually alienated his own bosses. Questioned about tactics at one regular catch-up with the board he said, one member has sworn to me, “I’m afraid I can’t share that with you.”

10. Tom Morrison
1950, 1952, 1955-56

Morrison, an All Blacks centre in 1938, was head of selectors from 1950-56, but was never available to tour overseas as coach. He coached a series win at home against the Lions in 1950. In 1956, when the Springboks were beaten for the first time in a test series, the All Black backs were largely ignored during the most hysterical, intense rugby season there’s ever been in New Zealand. Fifty years later, All Black Ross Brown told me: “I didn’t get the ball a hell of a lot, and I was playing first-five!”

9. Ian Foster
2020-2023

Foster came within one successful Richie Mo’unga conversion in the World Cup final in Paris against South Africa of leaping up into fifth place on this list. If the All Blacks had won the final, some of the downsides of the Foster era - a series loss to Ireland, the first ever losses to Argentina - would have felt a lot less traumatic. There’s a hint of the Laurie Mains tenure about what happened during Foster’s time in charge. In 1994, Mains’ All Blacks started the season with two losses to France and finished with a loss to Australia. Like Foster’s team, the glory didn’t arrive until the World Cup the following year.

8. Jack Gleeson
1977-79

Gleeson’s career was hugely impressive, but still one of lost opportunities. He should have been appointed coach in 1972. Instead, when he was a selector that year, he told me the senior men on the panel made it clear his job was “to make the tea and shut up”. When he finally got his chance, in 1977, he immediately won a series with the Lions, and then coached the 1978 All Blacks to their first Grand Slam in Britain and Ireland. Tragically his time as coach was cut short by cancer. He died in November, 1979.

7. John Hart
1996-1999

When Hart returned from taking the All Blacks to their first series victory in South Africa in 1996 there was a ticker-tape parade down Queen St, and talk of a knighthood seemed realistic. In 1997, the All Blacks were unbeaten. The second half of his tenure was a nightmare, with five straight losses in 1998, and a semifinal exit at the 1999 Rugby World Cup. He’d be pilloried during his last two years, but the South Africa tour was a triumph.

6. Alex Wyllie
1988-1991

Wyllie’s record as head coach would become mired in controversy, with the sacking of unbeaten captain Wayne Shelford. A lack of confidence in Wyllie inside the NZRU, eventually led to the ludicrous decision to make him and John Hart co-coaches for the 1991 World Cup. But until the Shelford sacking, there had been 13 tests under Wyllie for 12 victories, and one draw.

5. Neil McPhail
1961-1965

The best forgotten national coach. McPhail, a platoon commander in World War II, formed a brilliant coaching partnership with a great captain, Wilson Whineray. McPhail, famous for being brutally demanding, found the perfect foil in his more conciliatory skipper. McPhail’s All Blacks demolished France in 1961, won four and drew one test in Britain and France in 1963-1964, and beat South Africa 3-1 in New Zealand in 1965. He remains probably the only All Blacks coach to say to reporters after a test, as he did at Twickenham in 1964: “Talk to the players, not me. I wasn’t out there on the field.”

Two games define what was, over eight seasons, a stellar international record for Henry. The first was in Cardiff in 2007, when, for the only time in Cup history, the All Blacks lost a quarter-final, 20-18. Henry’s assistants Hansen and Wayne Smith then stood by him when the unpopular decision to reappoint him as coach ahead of Robbie Deans was made. They knew Henry’s resilience and coaching nous were good enough to never allow the nightmare of Cardiff to inhibit his and his team’s march to triumph at the next Cup. Sure enough, at Eden Park at the 2011 Cup, the All Blacks, in Henry’s brilliant phrase, “thrashed France in the final”, 8-7.

2. Sir Fred Allen
1966-1968

As he would say when asked to comment on coaches who followed him: “Just look at the bloody record.” Just as important was how he revolutionised the All Blacks’ style, sweeping through Britain and France in 1967 running the ball, winning by scoring tries. “You don’t want wingers getting cold on the bloody sideline.” Back stabbed by the NZRU, who seemed offended by his superstar status, he resigned undefeated in 1968 “before the buggers could sack me”. Allen’s fierceness led to his nickname, The Needle, but he could, several of his former players swore, persuade as well as order. An Army officer in World War II, Allen once told me “I’d like to think I learned a bit about how to lead men”.

1. Sir Brian Lochore
1985-1987

Lochore takes the gold medal because he revived the game here, and showed how a group of great coaches, not just one man, could work. He was in charge at a time of huge public discontent with the game, especially in Auckland over contact with apartheid-era South Africa. When the 1987 Rugby World Cup squad first assembled in Auckland some players wouldn’t wear All Blacks gear outside the team hotel. “People would come and stand right in front of you and abuse the hell out of you,” Lochore would reveal. His greatest achievement was that he not only won the 1987 World Cup, but also united, with stunning, joyous rugby, the Kiwi rugby public. His wisdom ensured two fiercely competitive coaches, John Hart and Alex Wyllie, worked brilliantly as his assistants. We didn’t know it then, but he’d set the coaching pattern for the professional era.