The more I think about the decision, the angrier I get over the arrogance and complacency involved.
New Zealand Rugby isn't getting away with this that easy, not in my world.
What were they thinking? How did they get it so wrong? Where was the desperation to turn things around?
Gone is the raw fire which used to drive rugby, replaced by corporate ways - designed to protect those at the top of course - which have encouraged complacency to blanket the game.
The rugby hierarchy uses the country's All Black loyalty to get away with incompetence. We're getting screwed.
Departed coach Steve Hansen may have been right in claiming his successor Foster wasn't getting the respect he deserved. After all, Foster was part of a brilliant All Black set up.
But on the other hand, Foster wasn't part of a brilliant All Black coaching set up at the end. He wasn't even part of a very good one.
That horrible, ridiculous, pathetic, haven't-got-a-clue World Cup semifinal performance against England involved the most comprehensive thrashing of an All Black side in a massive game EVER.
England were superb, but an All Black side full of world-class players were rubbish.
If that doesn't get you sacked, then what the heck does? If Hansen had put himself up for re-appointment after that, he should have got the boot.
His time was up. His formerly great team had collapsed. Yet his assistant gets the top job.
There was a weird arrogance involved in appointing Foster, as if to say the All Blacks suffered one bad day rather than being out-manoeuvred over the long haul.
The All Blacks – make that New Zealand Rugby - have totally lost me on this one. It was time for brave revolution, not questionable evolution.
Triple Crusaders champion Robertson was the breath of fresh air that rugby desperately needed at the top. He would have re-invigorated a game that is dying on its feet in this country.
Robertson has a smashing record, as a winner working with some of the best players in the world and promoting newcomers at the Christchurch-based rugby super power.
He wasn't the finished article as a test coach, but no one is when they start off. Foster certainly isn't, that's for sure.
Robertson is a man who looks outside the square and he's still doing it, bringing in another overseas coach - the previously unheralded Mark Jones - at the Crusaders.
He was the antidote to a game that is going stale. Look at Super Rugby, which is undergoing the softest launch since Simon Someone took over at the National Party.
You couldn't make Robertson up in our national sport. He's different, he connects with people, he's still relatively young, and he is crazy successful. I know people who are completely disinterested in rugby who know of Razor and are intrigued by the man.
NZR stared a gift horse in the mouth and told him to go away ... and do what exactly?
So he keeps winning at the Crusaders, which proves what? How does that make him a better All Black coaching candidate? And if he loses, his stocks are lowered.
If he goes overseas, to try and prove whatever they want him to prove, he may be lost to the All Blacks forever. The timing may never be right.
If Foster does enough to survive long term, Robertson will remain sidelined and unable to show what he could have drawn out of New Zealand rugby.
I don't want to bag Foster outright. He's not a failure, he clearly has his strengths, but he was not the man for this job, not when Robertson was available.
And yes, it still p***** me off.
