OPINION
Gregor Paul in Paris
It’s not just a semifinal place on the line for the All Blacks this weekend, the credibility of New Zealand’s rugby regime hangs in the balance.
It was with the World Cup quarterfinal in mind – a game that was almost certainly going to pit the All Blacks against either Ireland or South Africa - that so many significant decisions were made last year by New Zealand Rugby’s executive and board, who at times, appeared to make things up as they went along.
By mid-August 2022, chief executive Mark Robinson, his high-performance team and the board had to be thinking about this World Cup quarterfinal.
In a twist of scheduling fate, the All Blacks began 2022 with a three-test series against Ireland in New Zealand then played two tests against the Springboks in South Africa.
It was, easily, the toughest start to an international season the All Blacks had known in the professional age and after they won the first test at Eden Park, they then lost the next two, which meant they were sitting on a 20 per cent success ratio having also lost their last two tests of 2021.
It was clear the set-up of the team wasn’t right and so two assistants, John Plumtree and Brad Mooar were fired.
But when the All Blacks lost their next game to the Boks in Mbombela, the question had to be asked whether head coach Ian Foster also had to be relieved of his duties.
Was he the right head coach to give the All Blacks the best chance of beating either Ireland or South Africa in a World Cup knockout game?
It was a messy, messy business conducted haphazardly, with no sense that there was unanimity between sco, the high-performance unit or the board.
In the end, Foster survived partly because the All Blacks pulled off an incredible win in their next match at Ellis Park, and partly because his senior players hit up Robinson with an impassioned plea to not make a change.
But really, Foster survived for two bigger reasons: one, he persuaded former Ireland coach Joe Schmidt to operate as the team’s attack coach.
Schmidt knew plenty about building teams to beat Northern Hemisphere opposition (which the South Africans essentially are, too) and of course, having spent eight years with Ireland, he knew plenty about them.
The All Blacks’ record against Ireland between November 2021 and July 2022 was played four, won one and against South Africa over roughly the same period, it was played four, won two.
Foster had been chasing Schmidt for two years, so once he got him over the line as the attack coach, the NZR board felt they had a coaching package that would give the All Blacks better odds of winning a quarterfinal against either Ireland or South Africa.
Schmidt’s perceived value was such, that as the Herald previously revealed, he was asked by NZR to meet with Scott Robertson while the All Blacks were in South Africa last year, to see if he felt they could work together.
When Schmidt said no, out of a sense of loyalty to Foster, the decision was made to keep the incumbent through to the World Cup.
But in a further sign of the erratic and seemingly non-strategic thinking that besets the highest echelons of rugby administration and governance in New Zealand, three months after retaining Foster, the board effectively decided that while he and his coaching team were the right group for 2023, they wouldn’t be the right group for 2024.
They wanted to have the certainty that change would be coming to the All Blacks and so in March this year, they appointed Robertson to take over in 2024.
It was a decision made as much, supposedly, to begin a new era where the All Blacks are less of an island within the confines of NZR, as it was to reward the enigmatic Robertson whose success is undeniable and who was making noises about heading offshore.
The national body wants better access to its national team. It believes that for too long, the All Blacks have operated with too much autonomy and been a law unto themselves in terms of how they engage with media, stakeholders and the union itself.
And most specifically NZR wants more control over the All Blacks to be able to dictate the terms on which players and management are obliged to help deliver the execution of in-house media projects, commercial initiatives and stakeholder relationships.
There’s too much money invested in the team now that Silver Lake is a shareholder for NZR to feel it has an independent fiefdom operating inside its walls.
But the decision to move early on appointing Robertson carries an enormous risk as the thinking behind the decisions to keep Foster last year and then biff him after the tournament could be exposed as convoluted and conflicted if the All Blacks beat Ireland.
There’s a sense in all this that the board liked the narrative they could build around injecting Schmidt and retaining Foster, but in making that decision, they were swayed more by a desire to protect Robertson.
Did they want to have him locked in as the successor ahead of the tournament so that if, and as many of the directors obviously felt, when, the All Blacks were knocked out in the quarterfinal they would have Robertson sitting in wait as the saviour?
It’s a plan that works unless of course the All Blacks beat Ireland and go on to win the World Cup. Then it looks ill-considered and one made for political and commercial reasons rather than high performance.
The danger for NZR and all those who were complicit in the Foster-Robertson saga is that they may have to explain why they fired a World Cup-winning coach.
How they answer that will be tricky because they don’t want to have to admit that it was a power play – a move to ensure that they could get their commercial hooks into the All Blacks next year and have the confidence that their chief executive, initially at least, will have a better working relationship with the head coach.
And in what kind of administrative world does it make sense for a governance group to convince themselves they made the right decision on the basis that the All Blacks get knocked out in the quarterfinal of a World Cup?
How can Schmidt be a king-maker in August and then five months later effectively be discarded?
On some level, the question is moot as Robertson is taking over next year and regardless of what happens in the quarterfinal, there is an air of optimism and excitement that he’ll take the All Blacks in a new direction.
But there would be more excitement, perhaps, if there was also a change coming in the governance of the sport to be confident that a charismatic, energising coach such as Robertson is not undermined in the way his predecessor was.
Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand’s most respected rugby writers and columnists. He has won multiple awards for journalism and has written several books about sport.
The former England winger opened up about his struggles post retirement.