Poll: Best AB coach - professional era
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@taniwharugby said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
@Chris-B I think the thing is, we needed Henry's approach to give Hansen the freedom for his.
Once we got over the 2011 hump, she was all gravy...well, until 2017...
Maybe. It's possible that we could have won more comfortably in 2011 with a less intense approach.
e.g. we possibly would have been better off if Piri hadn't snuck off for a bit of extra kicking practice and torn his groin. If he'd just chilled in the bar with a small beer!
However, since we won there is nothing that is to be changed!
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I don't remember the Henry era being any more of less tense than the Hansen era if I'm being honest, and as it's Paul writing about it I'm even less convinced.
Yeah McCaw is a boring personality, but before that we had Tana breathing life back into things as a different type of captain than we usually had, and there were younger players with personality like Jane and Dagg (before they put a microphone in front of him and he became a bore), and Ted always had devilish sense of humour and didn't seem any more obsessive to win than Hansen.
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Apologies if this has been raised, but would Hansen have ever become AB coach without his connections to Henry? Was he good enough to get there on his own steam so to speak? I think it's clear that there's no farking way Foster makes AB coach if he hadn't been made an assistant years before.
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@Rancid-Schnitzel said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
Apologies if this has been raised, but would Hansen have ever become AB coach without his connections to Henry? Was he good enough to get there on his own steam so to speak? I think it's clear that there's no farking way Foster makes AB coach if he hadn't been made an assistant years before.
Hanson was always tied to Henry, but his Wales teams played decent footy too.
If Razor didn't come through the Crusaders as a player, CHCH club rugby, Cantab NPC, and Crusaders as a coach would he have made it? Is he good enough to make it to AB coach coming out of his hometown BoP system and not through his Crusade connections? Or coaching the Highlanders for example.
I guess we'll never know, and they both made it so we can only judge them on their results, jury still out on Razor and Hanson was bloody good initially and then shat the bed at the end.
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I will concede that Howlett absolutely maximised his potential, as compared to the others.
As opposed to Rupes for example . . . who absolutely minimised his potential . . . and had a great time doing it!
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Got it 100%
Henry cleaned up a bit of a mess; and when he left it was in great shape.
Hansen took over something that was already pretty good; and we he left it was a bit of a mess.
Or heading that way; and maybe that's one of the reasons he left; cos he couldn't figure out a way forward.
And the next two guys have been bumbling along trying to sort it. -
@Victor-Meldrew said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
except his pass was pretty garbage by Test standards
Haha.
It wasn't that bad. But i'll concede it wasn't up to the very, very high standards of the rest of his game.
Very strong; remember him trying to put a bit of hit on a huge SA forward and getting squashed, quite comical.
All opponents had a stop Going plan.As for Edwards.
The ABs never bothered having a stop Edwards plan.
I know I watched him in quite a few games, but I dont actually have any recall of him, which you'd think I would, for the greatest halfback of all time . . . yeah right.Except for one game tho, but that was a game the ABs were not actually taking that serious, and just went out and gave the ball some air.
And the poms still f'n rave about it, "greatest game of all time" . . . yeah right; probably the only game that had been worth watching in Euro for decades.
Games like that all the time in NZ. -
@sparky said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
I'm not a massive fan of Gregor Paul so I won't be buying his book.
Yes, fatty Hansen is more rounded but not as rounded as Ian Foster. (Boom, Boom)
Ultimately , I don't see that the fact the All Blacks is a harsh environment a lot of the time is a problem. I think the fact that its values are Spartan is a massive strength. It's great if players have a good time and make friends along the way, but ultimately they are in the All Blacks to be the best Rugby players they can be and to win.
I have a lot of respect for Steve Hansen as an All Blacks coach, indeed I think alongside Brian Lochore and Graham Henry he's one of the three great All Blacks coaches of my lifetime.
But I rate Henry higher for two reasons.
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Henry was able to clear the barnacles of the boat from the transition from amateurism to professionalism and subsequent coaches have benefitted massively from his legacy.
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Hansen took his eye of the ball in the last few years. He caught too caught up with "trying to be the most dominant sports team of all time" and developing a style that would appeal to the casual rugby fan that he moved away from the foundations of dominant set piece and winning collisions around the park.
Winning a third World Cup in a row was always going to be tough, but the tactic of going wide so early without earning to do so made it a lot tougher.
Agree with your point about how Henry fully transitioned the ABs into the professional era.
The first couple years of professional rugby the abs seemed to be running on the fumes and the identity of the Mains era and the muscle memory of the veterans like Brooke bros, Bunce etc.
From 98-03 was a lot of tumult without the ABs really finding their feet in terms of the overall project. At least not like the Aussies had with Rod Maqueen or England with Woodward.
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@mohikamo said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
Got it 100%
Henry cleaned up a bit of a mess; and when he left it was in great shape.
Hansen took over something that was already pretty good; and we he left it was a bit of a mess.
Or heading that way; and maybe that's one of the reasons he left; cos he couldn't figure out a way forward.
And the next two guys have been bumbling along trying to sort it.Hansen had apparently intended to step down at the end of 2017, but was persuaded to stay. I wonder who would have succeeded him in 2017?
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@Rancid-Schnitzel said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
Apologies if this has been raised, but would Hansen have ever become AB coach without his connections to Henry? Was he good enough to get there on his own steam so to speak? I think it's clear that there's no farking way Foster makes AB coach if he hadn't been made an assistant years before.
I would imagine he would have made it because he has the intellect, the integrity, the man management skills and he judgement required and to me this comes across in his interviews. Whether he would have had the opportunity without being an assistant I guess is tough to determine but I don't feel like he was given anything he didn't earn.
Contrast with Razors assistants, you know from 5 minutes interviews that these jokers haven't a hope in hell of getting the top job. Some of them seem barely credible.
I don't know if that answered your question tbh but I do feel that Hansen was never given anything through nepotism or cronyism. He seems like a hard worker who always put the All Blacks first.
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One thing I worry about moving forward when it comes to quality of coaches is that when you get deep into the professional era where coaches can only remember rugby as a professional endeavor....
The coaches are going to end up being real one dimensional and just walking corporate thesaurus regurgitating mostly meaningless jargon.They will lack life experience outside of rugby, high level academic qualifications and the type of real world adversity that develops character. I like Razor as a person, he seems nice enough but I just don't think he has the substance, the sincerity and the thinking that Henry or Hansen had. I hope that it's not a harbinger of things to come.
I think that the reason that the Henry and Hansen program worked for most of those 16 years was because it was not built on bs or smoke and mirrors. It was a true reflection of the values of both men. Aaron Smith said that the biggest element of Hansen's ethos was he stressed to the players the importance of "being a good Kiwi" and everything flowed from that. I hope that is never lost.
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@nonpartizan jobs for the boys dont help, which has been rife for years.
Ex-players have a better insight into it, but too many seem to get jobs with FA experience and then in today's world, once you get a job, its tough to be fired.
Can't recall who it was i saw today that had picked up a Super gig, was still playing only a.handful of years ago.
Edit - Hayden Triggs, is the Hurricanes women's head coach, only last year was Manawatu Turbos assistant coach, his 1st coaching job.
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@taniwharugby said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
@nonpartizan jobs for the boys dont help, which has been rife for years.
Ex-players have a better insight into it, but too many seem to get jobs with FA experience and then in today's world, once you get a job, its tough to be fired.
Can't recall who it was i saw today that had picked up a Super gig, was still playing only a.handful of years ago.
Edit - Hayden Triggs, is the Hurricanes women's head coach, only last year was Manawatu Turbos assistant coach, his 1st coaching job.
Yeah, I see your point there and I wonder how you can effectively disrupt that because I bet everyone has "their guys". Like, how do we know that Razor has picked the best available coaches for his assistants and not just people he feels comfortable with working with? There needs to be a way to ensure the cream rises to the top.
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@nonpartizan said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
One thing I worry about moving forward when it comes to quality of coaches is that when you get deep into the professional era where coaches can only remember rugby as a professional endeavor....
Good point
I think we have seen the last of the AB coaches that have had real world jobs.
Robertson being the first who has never worked outside the rugby industry.I see in American football that there are actually some families of coaches over multiple generations.
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@mohikamo said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
@nonpartizan said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
One thing I worry about moving forward when it comes to quality of coaches is that when you get deep into the professional era where coaches can only remember rugby as a professional endeavor....
Good point
I think we have seen the last of the AB coaches that have had real world jobs.
Robertson being the first who has never worked outside the rugby industry.I see in American football that there are actually some families of coaches over multiple generations.
I don't follow the sport much tbh but wasnt Lane Kiffin one of those type of nepo coaches? I seem to recall he got a gig with the Raiders at a super young age off the back of a few years at USC as an assistant.
Rick Adelmans son coaches in the NBA, I'm sure he's got the requisite skills but man it must be nice to have a last name and connections that 99% of people will never have no matter how good they are.
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@MN5 said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
Howlett scored a lot of tries ( more than anyone else ! ) but wasn't a genuine gamebreaker like others were. The more I think about it the more I'd choose Tuqiri over him.
Tuqiri? I dont think I can ever recall him taking the outside break - whether it was a league habit or not he had an obsession with cutting back in field and an aversion to the sideline and after a while it became very predictable. Tuqiri had a good World Cup in 2003 but his physical (and rugby) profile was bigger than his production.
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@KiwiMurph said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
@MN5 said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
Howlett scored a lot of tries ( more than anyone else ! ) but wasn't a genuine gamebreaker like others were. The more I think about it the more I'd choose Tuqiri over him.
Tuqiri? I dont think I can ever recall him taking the outside break - whether it was a league habit or not he had an obsession with cutting back in field and an aversion to the sideline and after a while it became very predictable. Tuqiri had a good World Cup in 2003 but his physical (and rugby) profile was bigger than his production.
Was he the more successful out of that Rogers, Sailor trio? Not refuting your point btw just curious to know how that group of converts are perceived all these years later. I never watched enough wallaby tests at that time to be able to pass comment.
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@nonpartizan said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
wasnt Lane Kiffin one of those type of nepo coaches?
Yep. Classic example. I thought he was a complete F wit at first. But now I quite like him.
A bit "out there", but putting some serious contenders together now.
He could end up at one of those mega college football positions that have opened up this season.It's hard to see NZ ever selecting a coach with real world experience again.
Even Foster spent only a short time on a non rugby employment environment.
Henry probably has as much respect as an educationist, as he does as a rugbyite. -
@KiwiMurph said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
@MN5 said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
Howlett scored a lot of tries ( more than anyone else ! ) but wasn't a genuine gamebreaker like others were. The more I think about it the more I'd choose Tuqiri over him.
Tuqiri? I dont think I can ever recall him taking the outside break - whether it was a league habit or not he had an obsession with cutting back in field and an aversion to the sideline and after a while it became very predictable. Tuqiri had a good World Cup in 2003 but his physical (and rugby) profile was bigger than his production.
Probably fair about any league convert not named Thorn or Robinson
