The men that really saved Foster's job

INTERVIEW: The pleas of a handful of experienced All Blacks combined with the appointment of Joe Schmidt to his coaching staff possibly saved Ian Foster’s job according to rugby writer Gregor Paul.

Speaking on Off The Ball‘s radio show, Paul shared details of the behind-the-scenes happenings that resulted in New Zealand Rugby changing their minds after the stunning Ellis Park win.

“All signs, evidence and journalistic endeavours were leading us to believe that pre-Ellis Park test match that the decision had already been made,” Paul told Off The Ball.

“He was going to be moved on, they were going to make a change at head coach. Then unbelievably they win at Ellis Park, all of a sudden here we are, they’ve changed their minds and Ian Foster’s the coach.

“Quite surprising, I didn’t think that was going to happen.”

The surprise win resulted in a farcical press conference the day after from CEO Mark Robinson, who fronted the media with nothing to confirm around Ian Foster’s position within the role.

They announced that the head coach would undergo his third review on returning home from South Africa and New Zealand Rugby began its investigation.

The New Zealand Herald and RugbyPass+ columnist detailed that a handful of veteran players told Robinson he couldn’t ‘fire this guy’ with the backing of the leadership group.

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“I think there have been a couple of really critical factors to persuade the Board to stick with Ian Foster as head coach,” Paul said.

“One would be, after the game a handful of senior players, here I’m talking Sam Whitelock, Sam Cane, Ardie Savea, Aaron Smith, looked the Chief Exec down the barrel kind of thing and said ‘you can’t fire this guy, we’ve got all the belief in the world he’s the right guy’.

“That was really compelling story that they told. They said please keep him.”

The second factor was convincing former Ireland head coach Joe Schmidt to join his coaching ticket as an attack coach.

Schmidt was previously reluctant to become heavily involved but the commitment of the mastermind convinced the Board that the coaching team is strong enough to retain through to the World Cup.

“And then when Ian Foster himself met with the board, he was able to tell them that he had persuaded Joe Schmidt, who I think has been a little bit reluctant to jump in with both feet and get into a hands-on training ground role.

“He was really resistant that he didn’t want to do it, but since the All Blacks got back from South Africa, Fozzy was able to say ‘look mate I really need you to be my attack coach, I need you to commit, I need you to jump on board and be with us’.

“Once he got Joe to do that, that was probably the critical factor that persuaded the Board.

“The whole make-up of the coaching team changed at that point, all of a sudden they had another guy that’s been a ‘head coach’ of a very good international team.

“That was the critical factor to make them think ‘actually, let’s see how this plays out’ because they’ve got a lot of faith in Joe being able to add something pretty dynamic to the attack game at the moment.”*

After the run of results that the All Blacks were on, the appointment of someone with Schmidt’s experience was a ‘huge’ factor in building confidence in Foster’s group.

After previous assistant Brad Mooar was let go, Foster had taken over the team’s attack but Paul theorised that Schmidt’s hands were all over the Ellis Park turnaround after breaking down the tape from Mbombela.

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“I think that has been a huge part of building confidence [in Foster],” Paul said.

“If we look at the evidence here, the All Blacks were sitting on five losses from their last six test matches prior to Ellis Park.

“They weren’t playing particularly well, in fact they were playing very poorly. They didn’t look like they knew what they were doing, they were lacking cohesion.

“They didn’t look like they were going to win the last two tests against Ireland, we all know they didn’t look like they were in those games. They went to play in Mbombela, didn’t ever look like they were going to win that game.

“Clearly everything is broken here, nothing is working out.

“Officially, Ian Foster was the attack coach [for Ellis Park], but I have a pretty strong suspicion that a lot of what we saw was Joe Schmidt from afar.

“His ability to analyse the opposition, see what they are doing, and then create a game plan that is pretty strongly predictive on what they are going to encounter, really cleverly built, based on what he’s seen.

“Where they were poor in Mbombela, they were really strong at Ellis Park. So they looked at what South Africa did, broke it down, analysed it, and responded.

“I’ve got a feeling that Joe played a pretty big hand.”