The Silver Fern

Fostered Out

What will it take for the New Zealand rugby board to cancel Foster’s contract and pay him out? Forget the World Cup. There is no way they’re going to win that anyway.

But if the Bledisloe Cup goes across the Ta$man this year, after a near 20-year run, the clamour for change will be hard to ignore. And losing the Bledisloe looks completely on the cards right now, wouldn’t you say?

Ask yourself: What influence has Foster brought to the All Blacks under his charge, other than a propensity for losing every second game? What stamp has he made on one of the world’s top sporting brands other than completely tarnishing it? As others have said, there appears to be no structure, no logical game plan, no ability to deal with rush defence - just a reliance on luck and individual pieces of brilliance.

Of course, Foster would say in his defence that the All Blacks have to deal with a disrupted schedule due to the ongoing pandemic, but then so has everybody else. He might also say that NZ rugby, due to the drift of talent overseas, does not have the depth it once did. But the Kiwis in the Irish team, dismissed locally as journeymen, were passed over before they drifted offshore for better opportunities. That they are shining in a different environment must say something about the paucity of ideas at home and the attraction of a better set-up elsewhere.

Putting aside individuals, one might also say that all this is an inevitable result of globalisation of talent and the arrival of a tipping point in the ongoing export to the north of NZ rugby intellectual and playing capital. But then that overlooks the fact that some world class coaching talent remains on local shores, including a six times winning Super rugby coach and the recently returned Kiwi who masterminded Ireland’s renaissance.

Perhaps Foster’s strongest defence is the fact that margins in international rugby have tightened. The North no longer lags the south by default, as can be seen in the clean sweep by Ireland, England, Wales and Scotland in their return serves against NZ, Australia, South Africa and Argentina this weekend. The days of the RC sides being automatically fitter, stronger, faster and more resilient and resourceful are over.

But then that is an even stronger argument for a world-class coaching set-up at home featuring coaches who are innovative, forward-thinking, globally attuned and able to get the very best out of the playing resources we have. We can’t control pandemics, the strength of the opposition, the vagaries of the rule book, the variability of referees, the globalisation of the game - we CAN ensure we have a coaching and management structure that provides a hothouse for talent and ideas and preserves and enhances the All Black brand.

Again, I come back to my first question: What will it take for the NZ rugby authorities to grasp that all of that is now at risk?

What has Foster achieved? What players has he developed? What innovations has he introduced? He has done nothing but made excuses and wrecked the careers of several players.

I don’t buy the ‘we lack the cattle’ line. The NZ-born players in the Irish team were mostly journeymen before they migrated. Coaching and strategy and leadership make the difference.

NZ has none of that. In the meantime, Foster, with the support of an incompetent leadership at NZ rugby are trashing one of the world’s leading sports brands.

Travesty.

We’re going to need a bigger dunny.

All the ritual quibbling about whether this player or that player would have made a difference in the starting line-up or on the bench is a pointless exercise. The truth is that New Zealand rugby has slowly been giving away its intellectual and physical capital to the rest of the rugby world over the last few years.

Ireland was brought to this point over recent years - in part - by Kiwi IP as well as by player imports. Four of 23 players in today’s game were New Zealanders. This influence of the Kiwi coaching and playing diaspora is also evident in many other international sides, so much so that it is now clear that the brain and brawn drain overseas, itself a legacy of a golden era for the All Blacks, is starting to tell.

Now, under private equity ownership, New Zealand rugby is about to cannibalise itself further, devaluing the brand with money-raising farces like the US and Welsh B matches. The rugby hierarchy there must, surely, now accept that some of the best brains and talent is outside the country and will have to be imported. Instead, a self-satisfied NZR made the cardinal error of not going for renewal after the last World Cup. The lack of fresh ideas against rush defence is the result.

I wonder, also, whether the disruptions from COVID have had an impact, leading to lopsided results against second and third tier countries (Fiji, Tonga, USA) and too many games against Australia, where the code is dying a slow and painful death. The consequence has been atrophy in the forwards, particularly the tight five.

Yet the coaching brains trust has been reminded now on several occasions since the ABs were outmuscled by England at the World Cup of this danger and have been unable to respond. They’ve lost to Ireland now three times in recent years, after not losing in a century before that. They’ve lost to Argentina for the first time in history. And they’ve been exposed by South Africa. Yet, there is still no effective response to the rush defence; still no consistency in selections; still no sign of a Plan B.

On the playing side, yes there is a much discussed lack of an effective inside centre, a quality inheritor to Aaron Smith at halfback, an established dominant blindside, a new generation of locks. But personnel really isn’t the major problem here. The Kiwis playing for Ireland, after all, were all Super Rugby cast-offs, yet they outshone their opposites - particularly James Lowe against Sevu Reece and Gibson-Park against TJP.

It is now plainly evident that the problem for the All Blacks is in the coaching and management set-up. We’ve had two years of tinkering and moving the deck chairs since the Yokohama debacle. It is very hard not to conclude that without a change of coach, this ship is going down.

Sorry, put this in the wrong thread:

Watching the All Blacks bumbling, chopping and changing performances of late it’s hard not to conclude that no-one really is behind the wheel.

Of course, everyone is nodding sagely and saying all the right things - ‘we’re building, it’s going to take some time to gel, we don’t want to show our hand’ - but in the back of all their minds they’re really thinking ‘I really have absolutely no idea what the strategy is here.’ And that’s showing up with the way the team is playing.

Yes, there is a lot of frantic, headless chook stuff, playing at a million miles an hour, but without any evidence that anyone knows what the master plan is. You get the sense that they’re all over-programmed and excessively workshopped. The only time they gel is when they ditch whatever Whiteboard Wankery Foster has programmed into them before the game and switch to their own instincts as professional rugby players.

That’s why I think all the ruminating about selections here is just so much like shifting the deck chairs on the Titanic when it’s already hit the iceberg.

Of course, the loss of Retallick through injury, the inability to find a settled blind side, the signs of age and wear in the established props, the chopping and changing at midfield, the loss of form for Ben Smith and the absence of a Mr Dependable right-wing are all elements in the ABs’ plight.

But I think a lot of this stuff is more symptomatic of the Big Picture, which is one of mediocre coaching, lousy communication and poor game management. Anyone who has worked in the senior management of an organisation can see what is going on here. This is a failure of succession planning. My sense is Hansen has had one foot out the door for most of this World Cup cycle and has been content to leave a lot of the decision-making to Foster.

OK, so you might say ‘that WAS the succession plan’. But I also think they didn’t really factor Wayne Smith’s retirement into it. He was the brains trust. And I think the NZRU just had so much faith in Hansen that they didn’t see the hospital pass coming. My guess is that Foster has not won the confidence of the players and you can see that on the field. They are approaching matches with a disastrous combination of superficial bravado to mask an underlying complete lack of confidence in the game plan.

It’s an emperor’s new clothes scenario. Foster is not up to it. He’s been found out. But no-one at this stage of the cycle is willing to scream “He’s butt-naked!”

This is a natural thing with long-dominant organisations. They atrophy and what made them successful starts to work in reverse. Those at the top want to protect their legacy, but you often find that during their victory lap they are less willing to tolerate second-guessing. Foster was a safe choice for Hansen because he was part of the existing set-up. But if all you are doing is watering down what you had before, it becomes an inferior product.

Again, I don’t really think this is primarily about individual players, although there are elements of that. This is like Apple post-Steve Jobs. Everyone else catches up and there’s a tendency to sit on one’s laurels and stop innovating.

Bottom line is they’re done.

All Blacks seriously need some succession planning at halfback. The gap between Aaron Smith and the rest is that big.

Actually it’s the CEO who should be sacked and whoever is advising him. What a clown show

I thought the ALB-Rieko centres combination looked infinitely better than Havili-ALB. In fact, I wonder when they are going to give up on the inside centre experiment with Havili, whose lack of directness offers no threat and disrupts the entire backline. I can see he was an acceptable stopgap but they really need to develop Tupea.

Part of Australia's problem in rugby union is that the Wallabies exist almost purely to try to beat the All Blacks. Their marketing budget lives and dies on the Wobs scoring the odd win against their trans- Ta$man foe. That's because the Bledisloe is virtually the only union game that gets bums on seats here and even on that score they're struggling these days.

So typically the Wallabies' win against a depleted and unmotivated All Blacks in the dead-rubber cash-in third Bledisloe in Brisbane gave them a false sense of hope. They bask in the glow of trans- Ta$man confected glory for five minutes then go back to getting beaten by Scotland and being totally ignored by the news media here.

Worse, the superstructure of Wallabies rugby is erected above a decaying and neglected base rapidly sinking under assault from the other codes - even soccer these days.

That the Wallabies still sit so highly in the IRB dodgy rankings is the greatest wonder of it all.

I think the real story here is the increasing weaponisation of social media to build pressure on individual players and teams - a trend which is amplified by an increasingly desperate media now dependent on calculated outrage and a click-driven business model. Notice how there are no actual quoted sources in the story. It’s a thumb-sucker. To quote Orange Man, it’s fake news.

When he was appointed, quite a few of us thought 'well, that's a dumb decision'. He was an assistant, a not-quite-good-enough to be be anything more than the bloke who stood in the shadows and nodded to the main man's big calls.

But for some bizarre reason, the NZ rugby gods decided to anoint the idiot apprentice to the throne. This was a man who was a water carrier to those who came before and who has not a single original idea in his skull.

The decision might have been excusable, but for the fact that NZ rugby has a wealth of talent spread out across the world, all itching to come back and start a new chapter after the Henry-Hansen era.

Foster is a footnote to that era. We ALL could see that. We all could see what a disaster it would be to install a 'mini-me' in the big boy's role. But the Kiwi rugby bosses thought otherwise, a decision I suspect relates to Hansen's preserving his legacy by anointing an inferior to take over from him. It's a classic strategy for making yourself look better than you are, giving the job to the idiot apprentice.

After losing twice in Australia - once to a Wallaby team full of part-timers and then to a fired-up Argentinian team that hadn't played international football for over a year, Foster is toast. They may stumble on with him for a few more months, but he's exposed as incompetent.

If this were a purely commercial decision, he would be gone today. If this were a purely national pride decision, he would be gone within a week. But, unfortunately, this is ultimately a decision that reflects badly on the numb nuts who selected him, so I suspect they will give him sufficient rope to hang himself and hope that he commits hari-kari next year.

Just as well a game against Wales is not on the calendar, because I can guarantee he'd blot that record as well. What an utterly clueless muppet.

‘Highlander’ on The Roar sums up the situation nicely:

“This All Black side is playing with zero control, everything looks hurried, trying to score every time they get the ball and not playing the longer game of building pressure until your opposition cracks.

“We all saw in the Super Rugby Pacific final which model works the best. The Razor Robertson constrictor model choked the very life out of the hit-and-run Blues side, but at international level, the All Black coaching team chooses to ignore basic tenets and revert to the Helter Skelter model as their default. It may well work on occasion, but it sure is not the way to be a consistently successful international rugby team.

“If a board of directors were analysing the performance of their CEO and executive management team, now would be the time to take serious action. We have a Rugby World Cup only 16 matches away so now is the time for root-and-branch cuts in the coaching, strategy and playing staff of this All Black organisation.”

Full article

I’m not sure it’s about individuals. Ireland are a better drilled, coached and cohesive side. And we are not. There is no structure, no plan, no intent, absolutely ZERO evidence that these guys have been coached. Clueless. They’re playing backyard footy against professionals. Foster is gone.

The injuries in the backline are an issue, but the bigger challenge is how to play the Lions' offside defence. That there were no cards for deliberate offside on Saturday night beggars belief. At one point, Itoje was standing in the AB backline at a lineout, preventing Smith clearing the ball.

As for Barrett's kicking, memories are short. The previous week in Auckland he was getting fan notices for kicking it accurately from everywhere. He's a class act and one semi-off night doesn[t change that.

The one player whose abscence I think has had a real effect is Ben Smith. He provides the leadership in the backs that Read delivers so reliably through the forwards. Just his being there gives Barrett confidence and makes the Opposition think twice about kicking it deep. So juggling things around to make way for Jordie Barrett in a game of this magnitude makes no sense at all.

It seems they'll bring in the more experience Fekitoa as a straight swap for SBW and leave Laumape on the bench. I'd also give the night off to Cruden, who seems to be trying too hard and call up the more reliable Sopoga. With Naholo cleared, you have a few Highlander combinations together.

The first test strategy of keeping it tight through the forwards and exploiting the blind side as much as possible worked well. The rush/offside defence is a pain in the arse, but there's no reason Hansen can't do a Gatland and get in the ref's ear beforehand. Insist on cards if players continue to infringe.

The Lions are winning by playing a spoiling strategy, slowing play down at setpiece, putting in the biff, infringing constantly in their own half and showing they are happy to let the ABs collect points by three. If that's the way the Northern Hemisphere wants rugby to be played, good for them.

But I would dearly love the ABs to run them ragged next weekend, playing and winning with the precision, confidence and flair that makes the biggest draw card in world rugby.

Foster the Hilary Clinton of All Blacks coaches. It was ‘his turn’.

That’s good analysis from NTA. It reminds me of 1999 when NZ had talent to burn and thought they just had to turn up to win. ‘Just pass the ball to Jonah’. iIt’s also a lack of respect for the opposition and too much belief in their own myth. Most of all, it’s poor leadership and coaching. Foster’s a dead man walking.

@tim They’ve been diving over the ruck and going off their feet all night

Oh, FFS that fluffybunny Kearns saying Garces was giving all the 50/50 calls to the All Blacks. Someone smash that smug prick in the face.

@akan004 It’s because they are running off an old template of a speed game with light back-like loose forwards running oppositions ragged. Three problems with that - one, you need to win first phase possession, two you need to be competitive at the breakdown and three, you need a strategy that has not already been on show for five years. This is very ordinary and unimaginative coaching. It’s like when Tim Cook took over from Steve Jobs at Apple. The thinking was ‘we have a winning formula. Just keep on churning out product based on the same template that the rest of the world has already worked out years ago’. It’s stale thinking from mediocrities standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before and enabled by conservative money men who are chained to what they think is a winning formula.

Private equity owners currently calculating depreciation and amortisation allowances.