Next All Blacks coach: Jamie Joseph and Dave Rennie emerge as only real contenders – Gregor Paul
THE FACTS
- Scott Robertson stood down as All Blacks coach last month.
- Applications for the All Blacks head coach closed on Tuesday, with Jamie Joseph and Dave Rennie likely to be the only contenders.
- New Zealand has a solid reputation for developing great coaches.
Applications to be the All Blacks head coach closed today and having started with a long list of 11 who met the criteria of having previously been in charge of an international team, six were effectively deemed of high interest, but it’s likely only two have put their hat in the ring.
For the seventh successive contestable process, the supposed ultimate job in world rugby has most probably only attracted two genuine candidates: Jamie Joseph and Dave Rennie.
Even then, it was not always certain the latter would apply, having hummed-and-hawed due partly to a long-held desire to take a break once his current commitment with Japanese club Kobe finishes in May/June, and partly because of a long-held lack of trust in New Zealand Rugby (NZR) to behave in a consistent and transparent manner befitting a high-performance institution.
For an organisation that has built a commercial plan to turn the All Blacks into a $7 billion brand, the marketing narrative is somewhat compromised by yet another underwhelming response to fill the vacant national coaching seat.
New Zealand may indeed have coaching riches which are the envy of the rest of the world, but there remain questions about whether the best homegrown talent wants to be at the helm of the All Blacks.
To some extent, this current process has fallen victim to the tyranny of timing. NZR made the unprecedented decision to unexpectedly remove previous incumbent Scott Robertson mid-cycle, and the suddenness effectively ruled out credible candidate Vern Cotter, as he had just committed to shift to the Queensland Reds later this year.
The same argument could be made to explain why Joe Schmidt was a non-starter as he’s made a commitment to be available to the Wallabies in some capacity through to next year’s World Cup.
But it’s also believed that Schmidt was appalled at the way NZR treated former All Blacks head coach Ian Foster, specifically the decisions to sound out Robertson about potentially taking over in August 2022 while the team was in South Africa, and then by conducting the process to assign the post-2023 World Cup coach six months before the tournament began.
Foster revealed in his autobiography Leading Under Pressure that he met former NZR chair Dame Patsy Reddy in Wellington shortly after it had been confirmed that his job was being made contestable and that he wouldn’t be applying for it, and she asked whether Schmidt would be interested in applying.
“I doubt it, because he has seen what is going on,” Foster said. “It has been a battle for me, given how he feels about what has been happening, to make sure he stays engaged through to the World Cup.”
Rennie’s feelings about coming home are believed to have been influenced by what well-placed observers said was a tense and combative relationship between him and former NZR chief executive Steve Tew when the former was coach of the Chiefs between 2012-2017.
The Chiefs won back-to-back titles in 2012 and 2013, but the prevailing view within the club was that they were portrayed by NZR as non-co-operative towards the All Blacks’ needs and requests in terms of player management.
Rennie is thought to have held a firm view that his job was to coach the Chiefs to titles, and not develop players for the All Blacks, and that he wasn’t given enough respect from NZR for what he achieved.
When he left for Glasgow in 2017, he sensed that he wasn’t being fondly farewelled, and so when the Wallabies targeted him in April 2019 to take over from Michael Cheika after the World Cup later that year, he signed long before NZR, via Sir Graham Henry, sounded him out about his interest in succeeding the departing Sir Steve Hansen.
Henry would go on to say in late 2020, after the All Blacks had drawn 16-16 with the Wallabies in what was respectively Foster (All Blacks) and Rennie’s (Wallabies) first games in charge, that NZR made a mistake hiring the former instead of the latter.
But as Foster said in Leading Under Pressure: “I knew that, after we drew the opening game, there would inevitably be more stories about NZR having made a mistake by choosing me and not Dave to coach the All Blacks.
“There was talk that the appointment process had been flawed because it was run after Dave had committed to coach the Wallabies in April 2019.
“But someone probably should have talked with Dave, because they would have found out that he didn’t want to work with NZR. He didn’t miss out on the All Blacks job because of the process – he didn’t want it.”
Foster himself left office after the 2023 World Cup final with a deep love of the All Blacks, but a profound distrust of NZR’s then board and chief executive Mark Robinson.
That three of the six high-interest candidates – Schmidt, Rennie and Foster – have had historical trust issues with NZR perhaps explains to some degree why the current hunt for a new All Blacks coach has once again likely only smoked out two interested parties.
In addition, there are stories from the distant and not-so-distant past – perhaps exaggerated or slightly out of context – that promising coaches have been made to feel by NZR executives that career decisions to shift offshore have been acts of betrayal.
The All Blacks will be in good hands regardless of whether Joseph or Rennie wins the head coaching role, but for NZR chair David Kirk and the board, the process needs to serve as a red flag – one that leads to the forging of a better, less emotive high-performance culture where aspiring coaches can build greater trust that their career decisions won’t be held against them.
Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand’s most respected rugby writers and columnists. He has won multiple awards for journalism and written several books about sport.