Rugby: Big Chief's finale

Ian Foster says he will stay in the coaching game. Photo / Christine Cornege

At 8.25pm tonight, Ian Foster will conclude his 106th and final halftime pep-talk, wander to his place in the coaches' box high above the Waikato Stadium turf and watch the team he's presided over for close to 3000 days play its final 40 minutes under his watch.

"Hopefully it will be a great night," he says. "It's meant a lot to me. I've been fortunate. I've come through the Waikato province and I've been able to coach the franchise that I played for, played really badly for, so I've been able to address some past sins."

The final whistle will bring with it celebration, especially if the Chiefs beat the Reds and potentially knock them off the top of the Super 15 table, but it will also carry a sting.

Foster has brought respectability to the Chiefs, who for the majority of their first eight years were New Zealand's basket-case franchise, but he never brought home a title.

The closest he came was 2009, when they were chewed up at Loftus Versfeld by the ravenous Bulls in the competition's most lop-sided final, but the last two years has seen a sharp drop-off.

All extenuating circumstances aside, and injuries in particular have been cruel to the Chiefs, the only two losing seasons under his command have been 2010 and 2011, suggesting he is exiting at the right time.

"Yes, definitely it hurts that we haven't won," Foster says. "It was always the goal. If it stings us and stings me, it stings a whole lot of other franchises as well.

"My era of coaching has coincided with a strong Crusaders team and, in the past three years, a very strong Bulls team who have dominated the championship."

Only four coaches have drank from the cup during his reign. David Nucifora won with the Brumbies in 2004, before Robbie Deans and the Bulls' pair of Heyneke Meyer and Frans Ludeke started playing swapsies.

Foster said it had become obvious in recent years that, to win, you needed hardened test forwards and international-class halfbacks and first five-eighths. The team he took to the final in 2009 was, by design, not expected to do much.

"It's funny, but that was the first year of trying to rebuild the tight five. That success came a year earlier than expected. We had brought up Ben May, Arizona Taumalolo, James McGougan and Kevvie O'Neill. We were pleasantly surprised how quickly they adapted."

So everything was primed for a big 2010 until everyone that was anyone went down in a screaming heap. If Foster is owed a mulligan, it's that year, but he will wear this year's lack of achievement on the chin, knowing his final attempt to win a title with the Chiefs disintegrated far too early.

"It remains an unfulfilled ambition."

TAKING IT on the chin is something Foster has become skilled at.

Despite little pedigree of success at the franchise, people expect.

There are those who feel Foster has outstayed his welcome (he would concede himself that he needed his arm twisted to come back for a final campaign this year); that another local hero, Warren Gatland, should have been given an opportunity after winning the NPC with Waikato in 2006; that Foster's longevity owes more to some real or imagined favoured status in the halls of power in Wellington than it does to results.

The 46-year-old has never dealt with the barbs with anything less than equanimity.

"If you're a coach at Super level, your face is on the dartboard and the dart will hit you sometimes," he says. "There's two strategies to deal with that. One is to question yourself to make sure you're being consistent with the values you have as a person and a coach.

"Secondly, you can't take it personally. That sounds corny, but it's part of the job. If my team lose, then I should expect something. That's how it works.

"You can take it too personally at times and let it effect you and that's when you lose your focus. One of the advantages of being around for a while is you get a few daggers in your back and you learn it's part of the business, but it's not the important part."

Every now and then, Foster says, coaching feels like a real job, that you have massive ups and downs and that you cannot turn the switch off when you walk through the door and stop becoming a coach.

You have, he says, to be "sharp to survive". Implicit in that is that you have to be able to play the game of politics as well as rugby.

But for all that he wouldn't change it for the world.

"I love the fact you get measured all the time. You've always got to review where you're at and try to figure out a way of getting better. That side of it I love.

"I feel like I'm a better coach now after eight years, than what I was when I went into it.

"The job is getting bigger and bigger."

So are its athletes. The biggest change in Foster's eight years has come in the field of sports science.

The game is still recognisable - Foster says he likes where the latest rule interpretations have taken the game - but its participants are not.

There is not a gym at any of the five franchises, he believes, that doesn't have "Bigger, Better, Stronger, Faster" plastered on the wall somewhere. Coaches are chasing size, they're chasing speed, it's no good if one is exclusive of the other.

Scouting has become more physique-centric. Foster admits they're looking as much at body type as they are at catching and passing.

"Look at Lelia Masaga," Foster says. "We picked him when he was 19. His skills were pretty average at that stage, but his physical numbers, his strength and power ratios, showed us he could deal with the next step really quickly.

"Tim Nanai-Williams is another example. At a young age he had the physical capabilities well before he had the mental side of his game sorted out. Sam Cane is another one. He was at Reporoa High School two years ago, when we saw his size and shape, it gave us the confidence to fast-track him.

"Playing Super rugby when you'd just turned 19 wasn't heard about a few years ago, but sports science gives you confidence to fast-track some players and gives evidence to hold others back."

Numbers might be more important, 40m split times, BMIs and all that, but coaching is still a human endeavour.

Prop Ben May described Foster as a "people person type of coach" and it's hard to argue. He can handle getting grief himself but doesn't much like it when players he's fiercely loyal to, like Stephen Donald, keep copping it.

One of the criticisms of Foster is he's too loyal to his old guard, and Donald is most often used as the prime example.

"It hurts me. We hold past failings over people a hell of a lot.

"People will make opinions over players and for the next five years they want to justify that opinion. The Blues game [won 16-11 by the Chiefs] was a classic. Steve had a really poor 15-20 minutes. We all know that. I was starting to think about subbing him, but I know him as a person and that game was probably reflective of him as a person and his career.

"Yes, he made some mistakes, but if you think about the character he possessed to bounce back and nail the next 60 minutes when he knows he's had a crappy start, it's pretty phenomenal. He polarises supporters, but as a person and a character I think he's outstanding.

"I was interested to listen to the Dallas Mavericks' coach [Rick Carlisle]. When Dirk Nowitzki was entertaining offers to leave he told him, 'Mate, we haven't won anything yet, but you're my man and I'll stick with you through high water. So if I'm going to get criticised for anything, I don't mind that one."

IF FOSTER is convinced he is a better coach now than he was in 2004, if the passion for the sport still burns as much as he says it does, it begs the question: Why not keep going then if you feel the elusive title is ever closer?

"I had to make a few decisions about 18 months to two years ago and had to figure out what the right thing was for me and for the franchise. I saw a natural cycle finishing this year with this particular group of players. I felt it was time - time for me and time for the franchise."

Plus, there's other challenges ahead. Foster will stay in the coaching game, whether it's part of an All Blacks panel or overseas. New challenges await and, he admits, he's unlikely to ever return to the Chiefs.

"I'm not sure it's the easiest thing, to coach in your own backyard. People remember what you were like when you were 16, 17 and 18," he jokes. "But it's been a special path for me.

"I'm sorry to let it go."

The Foster File

Age: 46

Family: Married to Leigh, father to Mark (18), Michaela (12) and Jaime (10)

Playing career: 148 games for Waikato ('85-'96); 26 games for Chiefs ('96-'98)

Chiefs pre-Foster:

1996-2003

Won 37 Drew - Lost 51

Post-season: n/a

Win percentage: 42 per cent

Loss percentage: 58 per cent

Best placing: 6th ('96,'99,'01)

Average placing: 8th of 12

Chiefs with Foster: 2004-11 - won 52; drew 5; lost 45

Post-season: won 1; lost 2

Win percentage: 50.5 per cent

Loss percentage: 44.8 per cent

Best placing: 2nd ('09)

Average placing: 6th from 13.4*

* In 2006 it went from 12 to 14 teams,'11 went to 15

Best player ever coached?

"Very hard to go past Marty Holah. There's a whole range of outstanding professional players that I've had, but I guess Marty, in terms of his work ethic, his humbleness, his willingness to put his hand up when things went wrong, the respect he was held in - hard to beat."