But there was something deeper than the impact of Covid-19: a sense of disunity within the wider New Zealand Rugby (NZR) organisation, of Foster not being supported, perhaps not even wanted by his employer.
What hung over his first couple of years in charge of the All Blacks was an obvious sense of regret emanating from within NZR, that they’d made a mistake by not opting for the younger – but less experienced – Scott Robertson, who was the other head coach candidate who had been vying to win the role in late 2019.
The media narrative had shaped the battle between Foster and Robertson almost as a culture war: a choice between retention of the orthodox or a switch to something new and different.
Foster was written up as a continuation candidate, while Robertson was portrayed as someone more progressive and in tune with the sport’s needs to entertain, and that he was better equipped to deliver on NZR’s formative commercial strategy of partnering with a private equity partner and building a global, digital presence.
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NZR made its choice in 2019 and then seemed to almost immediately back away from it in 2020 when there was not unanimous support for the decision from either the media or the public.
That meant that from day one of Foster’s tenure, there were all sorts of agendas at play and a detectable split developing between NZR and the All Blacks: a divide that generated an unmissable tension between the two entities and an unshakeable sense that the former was on some kind of power kick to try to take total control of the latter.
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The evidence for thinking this was that information leaked out of NZR, to the extent that supposedly it wasn’t uncommon for directors to be texting journalists from within board meetings.
NZR in this period became an organisation fearful of and reactive to media and public opinion and seemingly determined to work back-channels at every possible juncture to try to offer an inside or alternative version of what was really happening within the All Blacks.
In both late 2020 and 2021, media became aware that All Blacks assistant coaches John Plumtree and Brad Mooar had reviewed poorly with the players. These were confidential reviews.
In late 2022, it was starting to become apparent that NZR was thinking about breaking with tradition and running the process to decide who should coach the All Blacks in 2024 before the 2023 World Cup.
There was, again, clearly intel being leaked about that and not just to the media, as Robertson – who would go on to be given the job – let slip that he knew something about the planned process before anything had been made public.
But it wasn’t a leaked story that delivered the most telling evidence that there was a “them and us” split between NZR and Foster’s All Blacks, it was a media statement from NZR chief executive Mark Robinson after the July series against Ireland in 2022.
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.All Blacks coach Ian Foster (left) shakes hands with Ireland captain Johnny Sexton in the 2022 series. Photo / Photosport
The All Blacks had lost 2-1 and on the Sunday after the third test, Robinson wrote: “Congratulations to the Irish team for their well-deserved win last night but clearly the performance across the series for the All Blacks was not acceptable, as we know they have reflected.”
The use of the words “not acceptable felt aggressive, pointed and deliberate, and even though there was truth to it, it was a message that needed to be delivered privately.
At play in 2020 and 2021 was a fascinating insight into how the pressure to make money and the desire to grow the All Blacks brand, coinciding with the country being shut down by the pandemic, had created a whole new set of internal politics and dynamics.
That pressure cycle was perpetuated because Foster was never quite able to deliver results that aligned with expectation.
As much as it was apparent that Foster was at times undermined by his employer, and that he faced some unprecedented challenges in having to navigate the Covid landscape, his selections and strategies didn’t always make immediate sense.
He was not without culpability for the All Blacks suffering four defeats in a five-game stretch, culminating in the series loss to Ireland, and so there was a genuine fascination in seeing all these pressure points intersect, which led to both Plumtree and Mooar being sacked in July 2022 – and Foster almost following them out the door a couple of weeks later.
When the All Blacks, 18 months after that “not acceptable” statement was issued and six months after Foster had been told he was being replaced in 2024, came within one goal kick of winning the World Cup, it was obvious there was an incredible story to be told.
This was a coach and a team that showed a stunning depth of resilience to turn themselves around.
In August 2022, NZR was secretly preparing Robertson to take over as head coach, and in late October 2023, the team, with Foster still at the helm, ran out at Stade de France to play in the World Cup final.
It would have been better had the All Blacks won in Paris on October 28, but the fact they had made it to that far meant there was still a strong story of redemption to unpick.
That story was broadened by the way Foster had managed to conduct himself with such poise and dignity, regardless of the provocation.
There was something to explore in how he had stayed so calm, so task-focused and team-driven under such intense pressure, and it felt that in the oft-misunderstood world of what leadership really is and what it truly looks like, New Zealand had seen a tremendous example of high-performance management without ever quite realising it.
The essence of sport is that it challenges people to adapt and innovate. Foster’s tenure wasn’t defined, the way some people will always feel, by the five defeats suffered in the seven games between the end of 2021 and start of 2022, but by the way he made changes, recalibrated, came up with answers and grew the performances of the team.
Six months after the World Cup final, I contacted him to see if he would be interested in writing a book about his time as All Blacks coach.
I sold it as a chance to contextualise his time in office, to detail what was really going on in his world and tell his truth.
He took a few weeks to think about it, but he came back with a yes, but on the proviso the book didn’t set out to hype narratives to punch up the story. It was to be an authentic, non-embellished account of his four years as he saw them.
The fact Foster was willing to collaborate with me on his book says everything about his professionalism.
After the All Blacks lost the series to Ireland in July, I was strident in my view that there needed to be changes made to the assistant coaches.
When the All Blacks then lost their next game to South Africa in Mbombela, that was upgraded to a call for Foster to be axed.
My view, at the time, was that the team had fallen into such a dark hole that they were never going to be able to crawl their way out of it.
When Foster survived and the team started to play with greater cohesion in the second half of 2022, defending the driving maul better and having a more robust edge about them, it was apparent they were on a different track to the one they had been on.
They had discovered Tyrel Lomax, a mobile, scrummaging tighthead, they had shifted Jordie Barrett to second five and fixed on Richie Mo’unga as their playmaker.
Whatever they had been at the start of 2022, they were something different, better and more consistent by the end of the year – and so in November, when the All Blacks were in Edinburgh, I texted Foster to see if we could meet.
Ian Foster, Leading Under Pressure, My Story: the book cover.
We hadn’t talked one-on-one for months. Our last contact had been in July, when he had rung me on the Monday after the series loss to Ireland.
Foster had wanted that night to tell me that he hadn’t failed to turn up for a media conference the day before, but that he had never known of its existence. “You know I wouldn’t not just front up,” he said, and it was clear that this whole idea that he’d run for cover, when he hadn’t, was troubling him.
I told him I knew he wouldn’t not just turn up, but when I tried to engage him on how he was feeling, what he thought was going to happen in the wake of the defeat, there was no breaking the tension between us.
Our meeting in Edinburgh started as awkwardly as anyone would imagine, given the strained recent history, but it ended with a bit of mutual respect restored.
I didn’t revise history or pretend I hadn’t called for him to be sacked, but I said I could see how he and the team were bouncing back from adversity, that the best stories in sport are redemptive and that I felt I had been portraying that fairly in my coverage.
He offered a few insights into what was happening inside the All Blacks and we left with the air cleared: he respected my honesty – both in what I had said and in my reporting, which reflected the team’s resurgence – and I respected that he’d been willing to re-engage and rebuild our relationship without a grudge.
Foster and I went through close to 20 hours of interviewing to write the book and as we did, it became apparent just how much he’d had to contend with.
He revealed that he came under pressure in his first few months into the role to sack some of his assistant coaches before a game had been played.
And the book starts with the revelation that on the morning of the first test, he was told by Robinson that neither his nor anyone on the coaching team would have a decision made about their contracts being extended until December the following year.
It was an extraordinary decision, and as Foster says in the book: “I was flabbergasted. For one thing, if they wanted to deliver bad news, then this was not a great time to do it. I thought that would have been obvious, but apparently not.”
The detail he offers around the way he went about handling the extended tour of 2021, which saw the All Blacks play their last 10 tests on the road across a 15-week period, provides a basis to rethink whether losing the last two games of that stretch to Ireland and France was the disaster it was portrayed as.
Foster made a strategic decision to put the welfare of the athletes first and when that tour is seen through his eyes – the logistics, the stress of players knowing they were locked out of their own country, the quality of the opposition – it does require some kind of reconsideration on the enormity of what the All Blacks faced.
And the lack of clear, concise communication Foster says he received from his employer following the loss to Ireland in 2022 paints a picture of an organisation that simply didn’t know what it wanted, or what its expectations were.
All Blacks head coach Ian Foster (left) and New Zealand Rugby CEO Mark Robinson, pictured in October 2022. Photo / Photosport
He says that Robinson and NZR general manager of professional rugby Chris Lendrum came to his house a few days after the loss in Wellington and offered only vague thoughts on what they wanted.
“Almost the instant Robbo and Lendo arrived, I could sense the pressure they were under,” Foster says in the book.
“It seemed to me that they were treating this as an HR [human resources] meeting. They went through the checklist of how I was. And once they got through that, they came to the point: things had to improve, and if NZR didn’t see some really good results from the All Blacks in South Africa, then there would be some changes.
“But they could give me no detail – they just wanted ‘improvement’. Nothing specific or measurable was outlined.”
Just how indecisive and reactive NZR were in this period is illustrated by Foster revealing that after I had written a column in August 2021 – after the All Blacks had beaten the Wallabies at Eden Park and just before they were due to head offshore for 15 weeks, that it was going to be cruel for the coaching team to be away from home for that period without certainty about whether their contracts would be extended when they got home – he was asked to ring me.
Robinson had rung him, to tell him that the board were unhappy that it had appeared that I was putting pressure on them to act, and that there was a warning for Foster to make sure no more stories of that nature appeared in the Herald.
The implication was that they thought Foster had been responsible for me writing my own opinion piece (which he absolutely wasn’t).
Four days after publishing it, the coaching team had their coaching contracts renewed and anyone who reads the book will find it hard to disagree with Foster’s contention that it appeared to him that while the All Blacks operated with a clear understanding of who they were and the strategy they would follow, NZR seemed to have its thinking shaped by the media and public reaction.
The timing of Foster’s book, coinciding as it has with the resignation of Robinson and the decision by what is effectively a new board to restructure the organisation’s executive, is coincidental, but it’s easy to see how there could be connections between the story he has told and the events that have transpired.
Foster didn’t write the book to advocate for change or to denigrate an organisation for which he has the greatest respect, but if his experience in office leads to NZR becoming stronger, better aligned with the All Blacks and the game more successful domestically and internationally, he’d take that as a big win.
Anyone who reads Leading Under Pressure will become aware that Foster has only great memories of the job and love for the institution that is the All Blacks.
And what they may also take from it is that there is a depth of intelligence to Foster that was perhaps never obvious through his front-of-house presentations as All Blacks coach.
All Blacks head coach Ian Foster (centre) with assistants Joe Schmidt (left) and Jason Ryan. Photo / Photosport
He’s not a natural showman, but to say he’s not charismatic is to miss that his strength lies in his ability to connect with people one-on-one, and to use a feisty wit in an understated way to build rapport.
The book contains supplementary testimony from leading players Beauden Barrett, Ardie Savea and Aaron Smith that demonstrates the depth of respect in which the coach was held – something that couldn’t possibly have happened if Foster didn’t have a deeply considered, strategic approach to coaching the All Blacks and the mana to deliver it.
It’s apparent that the senior players and coaching and management group felt that he led the team honestly and authentically, and that there was incredible respect for the way he brushed aside the internal dramas and personal disappointment he suffered at the way he lost his job in March 2023 to ensure the team stayed focused on preparing for the World Cup.
“The one thing you must do as a coach is to live up to the same expectations and demands that you ask of the players,” Foster says in his epilogue.
“And that is to do what you say you are going to do. If the group of men and women that I led feel that they saw behaviours from me, then I will be a happy man.”