The values that taught All Black coach Foster to keep the faith
SPOTLIGHT: Ian Foster grew up with faith “an important part of our family” and the New Zealand head coach has had to draw on deep reserves of that with his job at one point in doubt.
Now the 58-year-old is set to lead the All Blacks into Saturday’s World Cup Final against South Africa.
Foster’s late father Jack made quite a journey from being a hairdresser to a Presbyterian minister and his strong faith was imbued into the rest of the family.
Foster has required that faith, battling through a tough four years since he replaced two-time World Cup winner Steve Hansen, for whom he was assistant coach from 2012 to 2019.
The nadir was last year when he oversaw the first home series defeat in almost three decades after Ireland came from 0-1 down to win 2-1 in July. A win over South Africa in August eased the pressure but the jitters returned when Argentina beat them in Christchurch.
Both those defeats have been avenged in this World Cup – beating the Irish 28-24 in an engrossing quarterfinal and then whipping the Pumas 44-6 in a one-sided semifinal.
All that remains is to beat fellow three-time champions South Africa in the Final and avenge the 7-35 thrashing by the Springboks in their final warm-up match in August, the All Blacks’ heaviest-ever defeat.
Foster rarely reveals much about himself but in 2021 he talked about how faith plays a large part in his family’s life.
“I think … that faith was an important part of our family, still is,” he told stuff.co.nz.
“But it’s the stuff that goes on behind the scenes, you know, the number of times that we had people staying in our house who needed help, or Mum and Dad were working with people and gave their time, just for other people.”
Players’ delegation
Foster said he learned a valuable lesson from an unlikely guest in the family household.
“I remember there was a while there in Tokoroa, we had a local gang member who was staying with us for two or three months, because he was a bit of a lost person,” said Foster.
“So I learned very early on that everyone’s equal, you know, everyone’s just got different cards they’ve been dealt with.
“And really, it’s not to allow the labels to influence you too much about who the person is within that.”
That has filtered through to his relationships with the players, which became touchingly apparent in the aftermath of their unexpected 35-23 victory over the Springboks in Johannesburg in August 2022.
The win reduced the usually unexpressive Foster to tears.
“I kind of felt, ‘OK, not a bad way to go’,” Foster revealed in a documentary ‘”All Blacks: In Their Own Words: Loyalty”.
“I actually went back to the shed and just sat there by myself, and had a few tears.”
However, little did Foster know but a players’ delegation – including Ardie Savea, Beauden Barrett and Aaron Smith – went to see New Zealand Rugby CEO Mark Robinson to tell him they had faith in their head coach despite the rocky patch of results.
“Big dog [Robinson] took the feedback,” said Savea.
“Yeah, you can get people’s opinions but you look at his [Foster] fruit and his fruit is us, the players, and we’re the ones that are saying he’s a great coach.”
Foster, who is married with three grown-up children, has had to make sacrifices, not least his own job as Scott Robertson was named head coach earlier this year and will succeed him after the World Cup.
Foster, though, is anchored by his personal philosophy and his faith.
“We [his wife and children] have a lot of conversations about personal identity, about who you are and how you’re not defined by what other people say you are,” he told stuff.nz.co.
Regardless, though, if he wins the Webb Ellis trophy on Saturday he will be defined as a World Cup-winning coach whose employers did not have enough faith in him to renew his contract.
However, as he said earlier in the World Cup: “History is yesterday’s newspaper, isn’t it, not tomorrow’s.”
