Foster starts the countdown clock on his All Black coaching career

Ian Foster.
Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon

Opinion – A couple of weeks is a long, long time in rugby. It took that amount of time for the All Black coaching debate to mutate back from a benign conversation around the country’s pub tables and living rooms to its true, monstrous form. First Scott Robertson flicked the switch on the reanimation machine with his comments about NZ Rugby supposedly appointing a new coach within the coming days, then in the last 24 hours Ian Foster unleashed the shackles on the media-devouring beast with an interview in the New Zealand Herald and revealing follow up on Newstalk ZB.

The key takeaway from his chat with Mike Hosking this morning is that he didn’t expect to be coach of the All Blacks next year. To be fair, it would have been more of a surprise if he said he did, given that NZ Rugby have backflipped (again) on how they feel about him in the last month or so.

It’s important to clarify one thing first, though: this debate was attempted to have been settled last season, when NZR’s board backed Foster through to the end of the Rugby World Cup. They effectively kicked the can down the road after the All Blacks’ horror start to 2022 after apparently flip-flopping on a decision to sack Foster after the loss to the Springboks in Mbombela, so this issue was always going to come up again even if the coaching maelstrom that saw Wales, England and Australia replace their men in charge didn’t happen at the back end of last year.

But now? In the week when Super Rugby Pacific and Aupiki are starting? Two competitions that are already thrashing around for attention are getting drowned by the coaching status of a team that isn’t playing until July and will only be putting on two games in New Zealand this season anyway. While the men can probably sustain this, given that the real showpiece derby matches are sprinkled throughout the season and has selection storylines on a weekly basis, Aupiki is still in its beta stage and needs eyeballs and headlines more than anything else.

In short, no one needs this – not the people directly involved, not the players they’re coaching or employing, not the wider rugby community that’s constantly finding out just how chaotic things are at the top level and left wondering what hope there is for anything happening below it.

While the board fully deserve their share of criticism, for the first time it seems like Robertson has finally found the point where his approval rating with the public ends. Putting pressure on NZR to make a decision and hinting at a move to coach Fiji probably seemed like a good idea at the time but the ripple effect that it’s caused, along with the almost daily news of All Blacks announcing that they’re leaving is putting a seriously sour taste in everyone’s mouths.

Because that’s the real issue here. While Foster’s chat with Mike Hosking was a revealing and interesting take, especially around the needs of the All Black unit as a whole and a refusal to even utter Robertson’s name, it shows yet again just how self-absorbed that level has become. Last year the All Blacks decided to deprive the Super Rugby final of much-needed oxygen by naming their squad on the same week, and the competition will once again suffer this time by having players pulled in and out at the behest of their high-performance requirements.

Foster’s stance is somewhat admirable, in a fatalistic sense at least. He’s signalled that he’ll either lead the team to glory in France or go down fighting. He stressed the need for clarity because the “needs of the team must come first”. That’s all well and good, but if that approach has been in place for his tenure, then the team’s needs include creating an environment where players are openly saying that they simply want more money now over a black jersey. An environment that’s seen historic losses mount up over the past two seasons and scepticism about World Cup chances reach an all-time high. And an environment that’s seen public discourse over his position get to John Mitchell-like levels of heat.

That’s the bit that’s not so admirable.

There’s no issue with rugby being a 365-day-a-year media cycle, especially in a World Cup year, but there is when it’s the same story repeatedly at the expense of everything else – and one that’s not looking like it’ll ever have a happy ending.