Ian Foster's future as All Blacks coach will be on the line in the second test. Photo / Getty
Ian Foster's future as All Blacks coach will be on the line in the second test. Photo / Getty
OPINION:
Hamilton has been called many things, even rocked a slogan for a while proclaiming to be not as bad as people thought, but this week it will be cast in a new role as destiny-maker.
One more loss for the All Blacks this week and Hamilton has to bethe end of the line for head coach Ian Foster and many in his wider management team.
One more loss and Hamilton, for the sake of a legacy 120 years in the making, has to be the terminus.
A victory for the All Blacks this week won't be enough to provide any categoric assurances about corners having been turned and new beginnings. That mistake of buying into the All Blacks' rejuvenation was made last week.
One win won't provide security or certainty about where this All Blacks side is going. One win won't make a dent in the statistics which say the All Blacks have a 25 per cent win rate from their last eight tests.
One win will bump them to a 33 per cent success ratio – a number that would have any coach of any top international side in serious job security strife.
But Foster is not coach of any international team. He's the coach of the All Blacks, the most vaunted and precious rugby brand on the planet.
The rules for him are different because history and expectation have made them so.
The All Blacks are the proverbial head boy of world rugby – held accountable to an entirely different set of standards to their peers and never out of the steely glare of the headmaster.
No one is being vicious or wildly unkind in saying that the All Blacks, given their history, their reputation, ambition and $200m of private equity cash about to be chucked at them, can't possibly make peace with these sorts of returns.
What victory this week against the Pumas would do is earn Foster and his team a stay of execution. It will be nothing more than that because the All Blacks are effectively now a bad debtor – no longer afforded 90 days to settle their invoices and are now having to effectively pay for services in advance.
That means they now have to lurch from test-to-test, hoping that they can buy themselves a little more patience and public goodwill each time they play.
This is the best-case scenario for the All Blacks in the coming weeks – that they can, test-by-test, post the victories and gradually win the trust and confidence of their fans.
They can't jump to the point in time where everyone automatically believes in them again.
Ian Foster's future as All Blacks coach will be on the line in the second test. Photo / Getty
The damage inflicted in the last eight tests has been too severe for that: the performances have been too volatile and impacted by such frail decision-making, lack of composure under pressure and inability to execute the big plays in the big moments, that it's going to take a long run of victories and immense show of consistent mental strength to convince a rightfully sceptical public that this team is on track to be a force at the World Cup.
Foster has acknowledged the importance of this week's test, suggesting that he fully understands that patience is not inexhaustible.
He didn't spell out what he thought a defeat would do to his tenure as All Blacks coach because he knows he didn't have to: everyone knows that defeat this week will destroy all hope, make it impossible to keep talking about micro improvements in skill execution while lamenting macro failures in decision-making.
It's already stretching credibility for Foster to be talking about his team being in a rebuilding phase as has been the case in recent weeks.
He's subtly been trying to recast his team as new, refreshed and at the start of a collective learning curve.
But lacing the narrative like this is more protective than real because other than the front row, there has been no overhaul of personnel or significant change of strategic direction to justify talking about a rebuild.
And besides, this is the third year of the World Cup cycle and with only 13 months until the tournament kicks off, it would have to be considered a major failure in planning to be at a rebuilding stage at this juncture.
The time for spin and deflection has long gone and we are down to brass tacks now: down to everyone having to be serious about where things sit. This week's test is bigger than the game at Ellis Park - it is now going to be billed as the biggest test of 2022 so far.
A loss this weekend and that's it. One more loss and the situation becomes untenable and while that may stress the NZR board, who last week unanimously backed Foster through to the World Cup, they have to be big enough and brave enough to admit they got it wrong.
