Gregor Paul: Three questions New Zealand Rugby must answer in decision on next All Blacks coach

All Blacks coach Ian Foster and New Zealand Rugby CEO Mark Robinson. Photo / Photosport

OPINION:

New Zealand Rugby’s board have answered one significant question by having revealed they are prepared to conduct their search for the next All Blacks coach before the 2023 World Cup.

They will now have to ask themselves a yet tougher question — are they willing to reappoint incumbent coach Ian Foster on the back of the 69 per cent win ratio he has achieved in his three years in the job?

It’s a critical question because NZR need to understand their motivation for breaking with historic protocol and conducting a competitive process ahead of next year’s World Cup.

Is it about getting the best result, or is this an exercise in appeasing a media and public that feel NZR stuffed up the appointment process in 2019 by leaving it too late?

If this is about optics, and being seen to right an historic wrong, then Foster and his team will not be reappointed beyond 2023.

The candidates, or at least the ones with genuine hope of landing the job, will include Jamie Joseph, Dave Rennie if he’s not wanted by Australia, and Scott Robertson if he is still on the market.

Crusaders coach Scott Robertson. Photo / Photosport

Appointing one of those three will satisfy the hankering for regime change — allow NZR to sit back and tell the baying masses that they got the cleanout they wanted and the fresh new voice they insisted the team needed.

If nothing else, sticking one of Joseph, Rennie or Robertson in the All Blacks job will buy a beleaguered NZR executive and board a bit of breathing space they probably need after enduring the full wrath of a media and public bemused and unimpressed by many of their decisions and behaviours in the last 24 months.

Booting Foster out won’t end the siege as it were, but it will at least allow NZR’s executive and board to feel the portcullis may soon lift.

If, on the other hand, they were to go all George Gregan and tell New Zealanders midway through next year that they are going to have four more years of Foster, you’d imagine NZR chief executive Mark Robinson waking up to discover a severed horse’s head in his bed most days.

NZR simply won’t have the stomach to deal with the inevitable opprobrium that will come with persevering with a head coach that came into office with limited public support because he was considered the establishment choice at a time when the door needed to be flung open to something new and regenerating.

For two-and-a-half years, those who opposed Foster’s appointment — said that it was a victory for certain administrative power-brokers rather than just reward for high-performance excellence — had their argument strengthened by All Blacks results that were riddled with spectacular lows and only the occasional highs.

But the last three months have given Foster’s tenure a different hue. The All Blacks finished 2022 with six victories and a draw and while it can’t be said that they transformed into an infallible and compelling prospect with infinite potential, they did stiffen their physical offering to the point of at least being significantly more intriguing than they were in early August.

Ian Foster during an All Blacks training session. Photo / Getty

And, just as importantly, the last seven tests of the year ignited the possibility that in 2019, the right head coach ended up in the job, but with a weak cohort of assistants as a direct consequence of the process being delayed.

The arrival of Joe Schmidt and Jason Ryan as assistant coaches in August has changed the trajectory of the All Blacks, although not the overall statistics of the Foster regime.

And that’s the next question for the board: are they going to judge Foster on an overall record that compares unfavourably with that of of his professional predecessors, or is there room for a subjective and separate assessment of the last seven tests since Ryan and Schmidt came on board?

It’s essentially a choice between seeing coaching as a science or as an art and deciding whether the irrefutable story told by maths — 69 per cent — is more compelling than the one starting to emanate from more than a few guts that the Foster tenure may just be building towards something worth keeping him around for.

NZR bungled their way through the 2019 process, but have, by a combination of luck, fate and circumstance, possibly now found the right All Blacks coaching group to take the team beyond 2023.

But it is unlikely that those empowered to make the choice about who should coach the team in 2024 will see things the same way.

The fact NZR is seriously considering bringing forward the appointment process to some time in the first half of next year carries a strong inference that they want to make change.

That they want to win public kudos as much as they do test matches and the PR victory that would come with showing they have learned from the shambles of 2019 and followed a different process to produce a different outcome is too great to be passed over.

But will cutting ties with Foster, Schmidt and Ryan be the right option for the All Blacks? Will it be the right thing for professional rugby in this country because presumably no one disputes that the overall health of the entire ecosystem is determined by the way the national team captures the attention.

The final question for NZR’s board to consider is how will they feel if they decide Foster and his team are not up to it, appoint a new head coach-in-waiting in April next year, and the All Blacks then win the World Cup with the incumbent group?

It’s true that mostly every follower of rugby clamoured for All Blacks coaching change at some stage in 2022.

The team was broken after the series against Ireland and preserving with the status quo was untenable.

Change did come, though, after that series, and really what the board are effectively going to have to decide in the next few months is whether they are prepared to deal with the consequences of not running the knife yet deeper.