After five losses from their last six tests, including three defeats in a row, and with unwanted records mounting, the All Blacks summoned their brilliant best to snap their funk and bring the world champions down to earth. Video / Sky Sport
OPINION:
Ian Foster must be wondering when he agreed to be cast as the central figure in what is shaping as the worst soap opera in sports history.
The plot is quite gripping to be fair, it's the script and the acting that are stinking things up – destroying anysense of this being believable.
For how long this nonsense can continue, where New Zealand Rugby chief executive Mark Robinson continues to bungle his way through catastrophic PR exchanges where he somehow manages to say nothing yet deepen the confusion, is almost as fascinating now as what will happen with Foster's contract.
But not the good sort of fascinating, the kind reserved for a David Attenborough series or a National Radio podcast about the best way to pickle fruit, but the bad kind, the ghoulish kind.
The horrible truth now is that the nation is almost being forced to rubber neck the car crash that is playing out in front of them with the coach of the national rugby team.
Foster hasn't been a coach that the country has held close to its heart. Until the miracle at Ellis Park, his All Blacks hadn't lit any fires in the imagination of a public used to a high-quality rugby fix.
Ian Foster (L) and Mark Robinson in happier times. Photo / Photosport
But there's a universal appreciation that he and his coaching team are throwing all they have to dig the All Blacks out of the hole they were in, maybe still are, and the evidence of their tenacity, astute tactical appreciation and ability to problem solve was writ large all over the 35-23 win at the weekend.
The coaching team, led by Foster, raised their collective game in the final week of the South African odyssey, but a similar elevation in performance was not reciprocated by head office.
A media conference with Robinson was called on short notice for early Sunday morning South African time – the declaration of which led the world to believe that clarity was coming.
That the coach was going to be backed or sacked – released from the purgatory of not knowing his longer-term fate.
Few moments in New Zealand sporting history have told a more damning story about administrative incompetence than Foster having to stand on the sidelines of Ellis Park after a stunning victory and tell Sky TV that he genuinely didn't know whether he will still be head coach of the All Blacks when they assemble in Christchurch to play the Pumas later this week.
There is the cold, practical impact of such uncertainty being so public: and that's the damage being done to the All Blacks – a sporting brand revered around the world for its professionalism, lack of histrionics and scandal.
No one ever imagines the All Blacks even have dirty laundry yet here we are now with NZR, their $200m deal with Silver Lake safely signed, now camped in the front yard with every soiled garment piling up in full global view.
It's a fantastically strange time, with so much money now resting on the success of the All Blacks, for NZR to determinedly keep this saga alive.
Robinson effectively told the media that his organisation needs more time to have more conversations about all the same things they have had so many conversations about already.
NZ Rugby CEO Mark Robinson's effort at transparency fell flat on Sunday. Photo / Photosport
There was a major review of the 2021 season in December/January. There was a major review and a couple of firings after the July series against Ireland and when the team comes home from South Africa, there will be yet more reviewing, or conversations as Robinson likes to call them.
So many reviews and no decisions feels like an imbalanced leadership equation and what's yet more concerning is that NZR didn't embed any high-performance staff or even an independent observer with the All Blacks in South Africa to provide Robinson and the board with feedback about how the coaches prepared the team.
Instead, the feedback about the coaching team in South Africa will be provided by the coaching team.
But there is potentially a far more serious consequence to this continued failure to provide clarity to Foster about his future and to publicly endorse him as the man to take the All Blacks through to the World Cup or relieve him of his duties.
And that's the impact to his mental health. To leave him in limbo is bordering on reckless now.
He said after the game that the stress he's under has led to weight loss and that through his eyes, the media's commentary and analysis on his plight has been vicious.
He's under the sort of mental duress that is almost impossible to imagine and at least if he knew he had the backing of his employer, the certainty that he's going to be in his job through to the World Cup, he could try to reach a truce – a working alliance at least – with the media core from whom he clearly feels estranged.
That Foster deserves better from his employer is in danger of becoming white noise – and that can't be a tenable proposition for a sport with such grand ambition.
