The Right Choice

Ian Foster has been named the head coach for the All Blacks. I honestly don't know what took so long and why they had to interview so many candidates for a role he had to have. It would have been daylight robbery if someone else was handed this prized position.

Ian Foster has been an assistant coach and All Black selector for around 8 years now and knows exactly how the winning formula works. The All Blacks aren't a bad team even though they have struggled of late. The team has such high expectations with the rest of the world that they have become the benchmark that others strive for. It was only a matter of time for teams to reach their capabilities and world dominance will be much harder to achieve in the coming years.

When I first heard about the candidates coming forward for this role I was a little skeptical on why the New Zealand Rugby Board was doing it. I think they already knew who was going to get the position and were forming a process on who the assistant coaches would be. Very rarely does a coach just come in from outside the existing framework in New Zealand.

I recall John Mitchell being treated very badly and losing the head coach role to John hart many years ago. This was more political than anything else and it was obvious they wanted John Hart in the main position as soon as possible. Any excuse to fire the head coach was found and don't believe Mitchell had a fair crack at the job as he has proven he is a top coach today.

Ian foster was an ex player and once his playing days were over he coached Waikato for one season and then the Chiefs for 7 years before becoming the All Black junior coach. The last 7 years he has been with the All Blacks as an assistant coach working under Steve Hansen. Hansen did say that Ian was the right and obvious choice to take over as he has relied on him for advice when needed.

I expect to see a few candidates who applied for the role becoming assistant coaches now with one of them becoming Fosters replacement when his time is up. This makes for a smooth transition making sure that the standards expected by everyone remain intact. Too many teams chop and change and the teams on field successes are never the same. Australia have selected an ex New Zealander to take them forward over the coming years and expect to see them improve drastically from what they have been doing of late. I thought Cheka was way past his sell by date and was rather stale with the team he was producing as they have not been decent for about 4 years now.

Coaches are becoming more and more important in Rugby Union and there are only about 3 or 4 really decent ones around right now. When I say decent these guys can change things for the better and they have a huge influence bringing more to the team than what others can do. I don't know if Foster is one of these guys yet so it will be interesting to see what he does with the team going forward.