Compared to what I would have been paid had I stayed on in England and taken up the four-year contract Clive Woodward had offered me, going back to New Zealand was like electing to be a pauper. There, I became coach of the Waikato Development team, and we won the national competition in 2000. My fee was peanuts, but coaching rugby was in my blood and I wasn’t in any particular hurry. I knew it would just be a matter of time before something bigger came along.
And I was proved correct when the Chiefs position came up. I applied for the job, which was an NZRU appointment. I wanted the union to know I had decided to continue my coaching career in New Zealand and had ambitions. Apart from anything else, I reckoned it would stand me in good stead for the future to go through the application process.
John Boe, a well-known New Zealand coaching personality who had coached the Waikato Colts for a few years, as well as Samoa, wanted me to join him as a candidate, his idea being that I would be his assistant coach. But I had to set my aspirations on being a head coach, as I didn’t think pigeon-holing myself as an assistant coach would be good for my career. John was highly pissed off with me for not going in with him, which I can understand. The pair of us together would have been a shoo-in.
Back then, if you labelled yourself as an assistant coach, you had to have a particular strength, but if you wanted to be a head coach, you had to be an all-rounder. I would have ended up being labelled as just a forward coach. I had been an assistant at England and, although I was head coach at Sale for a time, I was also effectively an assistant at Wasps, as Nigel Melville was the director of rugby.
I may have done more than a normal assistant coach does when I worked under Nigel, and I was definitely more than just the forward coach, but he was the boss and the buck stopped with him. If I was going to forge my career as a head coach, it was time for me to show that I could go it alone and take the responsibility of being the number one.
When I was appointed to the role of head coach at the Chiefs, I chose Kevin Green as my assistant. He had been my club coach for eight years and also my provincial coach at Waikato. Kevin had been in charge when we won the NPC in 1992 and the Ranfurly Shield a year later.
These days, many head coaches opt for less experienced coaches to be their assistants, the reason being that inexperienced guys can learn from them and grow into the job. But I have a different view and believe that the middle-management positions play a major role in determining whether you succeed or fail as a coach.
I took Kevin on board because I still felt inexperienced and didn’t believe I had enough mileage as a head coach. I didn’t need someone who was still developing – I needed someone stronger, older and wiser.
It was an interesting time to become the Chiefs coach. The franchise was composed of a mix of players from five different provinces – Counties, Waikato, Bay of Plenty, King Country and North Auckland (the later has subsequently been replaced by Taranaki). At that time there was no alignment between these groups; it was just everyone for themselves. The different factions all wanted something out of the arrangement but weren’t prepared to make sacrifices or concessions to get it. Counties and Waikato supplied the largest portion of players.
There were some great players who had played for the Chiefs, including Frank Bunce, Walter Little, Ian Jones and Richard Loe, but, compared with some of the other New Zealand Super 12 teams, they had a very fragmented structure and culture.
So I knew I had to shake things up and the players would have to make sacrifices. There was no Players’ Association in those days, so I called all the players in and told them that they had eight weeks to show me whether or not they were committed to the Chiefs cause. I gave them a choice of a triathlon, controlled boxing or a decathlon event that was rugby-specific. They had to train and show their mettle. Then I added: ‘And, by the way, everything will be in Hamilton, and the day starts at 7 a.m.’
Previously, the training venues had been moved around to suit the players from the various provinces, so the Counties guys were predictably extremely unhappy with the Hamilton location, and I also got a lot of flak from the administrators of the other provinces.
But I stuck to my guns and, in December, after the players had completed the challenges they had been set, we had a big braai where we announced my squad for the following season. I gave them some time off, but also specific guidelines on how to maintain their fitness levels during that period.
When we came back from the Christmas break, there was a guy from Counties, Kola Tekino, who had returned from a New Zealand A-team tour weighing in at 132 kilograms. He was a decent footballer but loose in his preparation. I told him he wouldn’t be starting at that weight in any team that I coached, and I put him onto a 30-day conditioning cycle under the guidance of fitness trainer Johnny Gillette. I also drew on the help of the Waikato B-team staff, and along with Johnny they got Kola fit by round two of the Super 12.
The first game the Chiefs played that year was against New South Wales in Sydney. In the build-up to the game we stayed near Coogee Beach. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing: the guys were lounging around on the beach wearing board shorts and slops, and it was the day before the game. I kept thinking to myself, ‘We are playing New South Wales tomorrow and these guys think they are on a jolly.’
Anyone who has been to Coogee in the summer will attest to the beautiful women who inhabit that beach, so once we had returned to New Zealand after a bad defeat, I laid down the law to the players. Roger Randle still often reminds me of how I stood up in the strategy room that day. After asking the players what they thought of their performance, I bawled at them, with reference to the time they’d spent on the beach: ‘Well, boys, we’re going to move on very quickly from that performance, because all you achieved was a suntan and a hard-on.’ Sometimes humour is the best remedy in a bad situation.
That year at Chiefs, we were always on the road because a new stadium was being built in Hamilton. We made our base at the technical college in Hamilton and played our home games in Rotorua and Taupo, and played the Cats in Tauranga.
Bit by bit, the culture started changing. I had brought back the big lock, Mark Cooksley. I had played with him and he was a massive physical specimen – although he lacked mental toughness. When he was on fire, he was really on fire, but when he wasn’t, he just wasn’t worth his place in the team.
I told him at the start of the campaign that he had to get through every Tuesday training session to be considered for selection, but in the build-up to the next game, against the Crusaders, he went down in a screaming heap during practice. So I called in Keith Robinson, who was a raw-boned rugby player who had only played about 10 minutes for Taranaki. I hadn’t realised when he was playing for Taranaki that he lived in the Chiefs region. So, in my early days as Chiefs coach, I called Keith and asked if he would be interested in playing for us in the Super 12 series, and to come and meet me at home.
When he turned up, curiously, there was a dead pig lashed to his car. He had left early in the morning so that he could go hunting on the way. He had bagged a wild boar, which was now secured to the towbar. That earned Keith his first tick from me. His second was that I had seen him give Robin Brooke one on the jaw during the NPC.
Because of his inexperience, Keith looked really nervous when we got to Canterbury. He didn’t have a lot of weight on him, but he had a wonderful engine capable of phenomenal repeat effort. Perhaps to help ease his nerves, I called him into my room and said to him there and then, ‘Keith, I think you are going to be an All Black.’
In the first half of the match against the Crusaders, we lost two loose forwards. We went in at half-time and Keith had done his hip. He could hardly move. ‘Mitch, I’m not sure I can carry on,’ he said, wincing.
‘Robbo, there is no one left,’ I explained.
I stressed how much we really needed him at that moment and how important it was for him to stay on the field for the good of the team. He said he would see what he could do. He ended up playing through the rest of the game in incredible pain. He was the sort of player I wanted playing for me.
We went down 11-40, and we had lost both of our games, so I knew I had to get the script together before our next game, against the Highlanders. I got the players together in the team room before the game and addressed each one of them individually, telling them where they were at that point, where they were performing and succeeding, and where they were failing.
You could just see the shock on all of their faces. Clearly, they had never had that kind of feedback before. My approach stunned them. I am not sure whether it was down to that pep talk, but they chose at some stage during the next week to do something about the situation, and from then on our performances showed an upward curve.
I really appreciated how Roger Randle grew as a player, but I think he was secretly thrilled when I moved on to coach the All Blacks, because of a disciplinary measure I had introduced at the Chiefs.
Whoever missed the most tackles in a game was given a pair of white gloves to wear during training. These were known as the ‘Fijian policemen’, and Roger was the first to receive them. Needless to say, thanks to Roger rubbing them in dirt and covering them in grass stains, they did not stay white for long!
We had a lot of ordinary guys who weren’t on the radar initially but who came through for us that season, and we also had some strong players and characters like Jono Gibbes, Roger Randle and the captain, Dion Muir, as well as Bruce Reihana, who developed a good boot that season. They guided the ship. We came sixth, which in those days, by the Chiefs’ previous standards, was an excellent outcome.
I was excited about coaching the Chiefs. I had a three-year contract and felt we were growing. I had just finished one season of what was a three-year plan, and it had gone better than I had expected, so the outlook was positive.
At the end of the first season I busied myself with preparations for the following year, and I had to watch the whole of the NPC to identify potential talent that I could sign up for the Chiefs. In one of the games, when Canterbury dusted Otago by 60 points, there was this youngster who was all over the place. He was such a standout in the game that it was hard not to exclaim while sitting on my couch: ‘Whoa! Who is this guy?’ The youngster’s name was Richie McCaw.
Not long after that day in early September 2001, I heard on the radio that Wayne Smith had chucked in the towel as the All Black coach in the wake of another Bledisloe Cup defeat a few weeks earlier. The cup had been decided in an exceptional game by Toutai Kefu dotting down under the sticks to win it for Australia.
I had watched that game and was disappointed with the way the All Blacks had comported themselves afterwards. They looked like a beaten team, a side that was becoming accustomed to losing against Australia. The captain, Anton Oliver, carried that demeanour with him onto the podium when he made his speech after the game. I thought we should have been humble and gracious, but not to come across the way in which the All Blacks did that day.
There was nothing in the All Black trophy cabinet at that point, and two years on from having lost a World Cup semi-final to France in London, in one of the biggest upsets in the history of the tournament, New Zealand rugby was at a low ebb.
After my years as assistant coach at England, I was the most experienced international coach in New Zealand. Robbie Deans was the most successful provincial coach, but at that stage his successes had been limited to provincial rugby and not Super 12, as he was not the head coach of the Crusaders at that point.
So, when they asked for applications for the All Black coaching position, I applied not only because I was interested in the job, but also because – as with the Chiefs – it would be good experience for me to go through the selection process, even if I wasn’t appointed. I had a good relationship with Robbie Deans, and I told him that I would appoint him as my assistant coach if I got the job. I am sure that, had Robbie got the job, he would have considered me for forward coach.
I was asked to fly to Wellington, where the NZRU headquarters was based, for an interview. It was held in a hotel, where I was interviewed by the full board, which included Chief Executive David Rutherford and former All Black Tane Norton.
It was a long interview that lasted over two hours, and afterwards I flew back to Hamilton and went straight to bed, exhausted. I was asleep when my phone woke me late at night. It was Rutherford. Clearly, the process had been put into action immediately after I had left Wellington.
‘Sorry to wake you,’ said Rutherford, ‘but we as the board have decided you will be the next All Black coach.’
He asked me how I felt about my appointment. How would anyone feel at a time like that? I was going to be the All Black coach, and although later I realised I probably wasn’t prepared for it, and, in truth, I don’t think anything can prepare you for what the job entails, at that point I was elated.
‘I feel great,’ I told him. I then started preparing for my trip to Auckland the next day to see Andrew Martin, the All Black manager.
Rutherford had asked me to meet Steve Tew and Martin at the latter’s house without delay to sign the contract. That should have been a warning sign, because a big contract like that would normally be signed in a more formal environment, such as an office or a hotel. But then, I assumed everything had to be done quickly because the All Blacks were due to leave for the end-of-year tour in a few weeks. So I drove to see Martin.
It was then that I encountered my first problem with my contract, something that would remain a bone of contention between the NZRU and me for the duration of my tenure as coach. The contract stipulated that I had to report to the team manager. I did a double take when I read that and refused to sign. I pointed out that I had applied to be the All Black coach, and that meant being the leader.
The management were saying I had to work under Martin, who wanted me to sign the contract there and then. I understand the concept of dual leadership, but I was convinced that the All Blacks could have only one leader if they were to come right. Players need one leader. I didn’t sign. Instead, I crossed out that stipulation and wrote: ‘Me to D. Rutherford’. I initialled the correction, signed the contract and drove back home. I then went on to Wellington to explain to Rutherford that I couldn’t have signed the contract as it stood.
Rutherford explained why they had wanted Martin to be in charge: it revolved around issues related to discipline, he said, something that had been a big drive in the NZRU dealings with the All Blacks since the end of the John Hart era as coach two years previously. When Hart was coach, he had apparently done everything, and the NZRU didn’t want a repeat of that.
But I refused to budge, and, looking back, I am still amazed that at the age of just 37 I could show such strength of purpose and be so clear about my approach to leadership.
Then some further requests for changes started coming in from the management. For a start, Wayne Smith had at some stage after announcing his resignation made an about-turn and now expressed an interest in reapplying for the job. The NZRU asked me if I would be prepared to let Wayne Smith and the assistant coach, Tony Gilbert, coach the tour while I sat at the back of the room learning from them.
I wasn’t happy with that idea either. Although it made sense from the viewpoint of a smooth transition of power, there was less than two years to go until the next Rugby World Cup. I didn’t have time to waste, and if I was going to get the All Blacks to be successful again, I needed to take charge and lay down my marker as quickly as possible. So I told them I wanted to get on with it on my own and get stuck into the job straightaway.
None of this resistance was going to make me popular with my new employers, and as Andrew Martin had probably enjoyed executive powers in the All Black management when Wayne Smith was coach, I was seen to be challenging the current system.
If you think this was a bold style of leadership from a 37-year-old, get your head around this. In my first squad selection, I dropped some legends of the New Zealand game, including Christian Cullen, Jeff Wilson and Taine Randell.
I remember feeling a momentary pang of nervousness when I showed my squad selection to Andrew Martin, who was visibly shocked. I was fortunate, however, in that I had been going through my selection process for the Chiefs during the NPC, so I was very clued up about the players involved in the competition. There were two or three weekends still to go to the selection when I was appointed as the All Black coach.
It wasn’t easy for me to part ways with the Chiefs. I had to let them know that, unfortunately, I wouldn’t be able to see through my three-year plan. I had made huge strides in changing the culture and I was immersed in the process when the call came for me to coach the All Blacks.
But I quickly moved on by throwing myself into the All Black selection process. I took my son with me to the NPC final, which was won by Canterbury. I remember watching Jeff Wilson and Taine Randell closely, and thinking that it wasn’t right that Taine was playing as an opensider when he was best suited to the No. 8 position. To me, his style of play was like that of the Bulls and Springbok No. 8, Pierre Spies. He liked to receive ball and was capable in the backline and on the edge, but he was more of a receiver than a player who played to the ball.
Jeff had become an All Black with me on my first tour; we had sat next to each other on the team bus, so it felt hard to leave him out. But, although he was extremely good at finishing, I felt he had lost the art of putting himself in position. It was like he was always in noman’s-land. This meant he was no longer an option, in my mind.
Randell and Wilson, along with Cullen, were the first casualties in my selection, and Christian later claimed he was angry with me for not listing him as an injured player when I announced the squad.
I was tense when I woke up early on the day of the selection announcement. I was contemplating how I would explain some of the selections, and there had been a few alerts, such as Andrew Martin’s reaction, as to how the public would react to the omission of Randell and company.
The announcement was to be made in the Heritage Hotel, Christ-church. For such a major announcement, it was taking place in a rather dark, dingy room. I needed to be assertive, as I had recognised that I would have to create some casualties in order to change the culture. I made it clear that I was going to be putting an accent on performance, and not on individuals, which had become the dominant culture at the All Blacks at that point.
When I was asked about Taine and whether I had communicated with him, I said that he knew my number and that my door was always open. That went viral, and the media made a massive fuss about it. But I didn’t see how it was my responsibility to worry about the feelings and sensibilities of a player whom I had never coached.
It was my job to pick the team, and the conditions of my employment made it clear that I had to select the best mix. It wasn’t my job as the employer to be compassionate about someone who hadn’t been selected. The NZRU has progressed since then, and today there is a clearer demarcation between what the coach has to do and what the union is responsible for in terms of looking after the players and their legacy. It is up to the union to see to it that the player is recognised for what he has given to the game when he is no longer being selected.
There was just too much responsibility lumped on the coach, too much expected of him, I felt. But, at the same time, I am aware that I communicated my decisions in a substandard way, and I have no doubt that I could have done that better.
You may well point out a fundamental contradiction, in that I decided not to inform Randell before omitting him from the squad, when I have stated that I felt Clive Woodward fell short in his communication with his England players. But this was my first All Black selection and I did not know Randell at that stage and had never coached him. Also, the tradition in New Zealand was that you didn’t let the players know about the selection beforehand.
But after that, once I had become their coach, I did communicate with the players and give them feedback.
Another thing I was nailed for was when Brad Thorn withdrew from the squad. I had chosen Brad, but he rang me afterwards to tell me that he didn’t feel he was quite ready to be an All Black. A year later, when he was ready, he decided to come back, a decision which really paid off. I admired him for that. But the media didn’t know the background and they hammered me. ‘So, why did you select him if he’s not ready?’ they asked me. I replied to the effect that the All Black tradition is to name a person if you think he’s good enough. It’s up to him if he wants to withdraw.
Everyone was given a second chance to up their game, with the exception of Jeff, as we had superior wingers lined up by then. But the door was never closed to the others.
Later on in my tenure as All Black coach, it became a mammoth task to communicate with the players regarding their selection. I had to call all the guys who might have believed that they were up for selection and tell them why they had missed out. Sometimes that meant 30 or 40 phone calls in a day.
At the time of my first selection, I felt that the All Black players were in a comfort zone. In those days, you would see advertising posters of players endorsing products. You sometimes got the impression that the sport was becoming entirely about the individual player and what he could get out of the game, and less about the team. At the same time, many of the players were still scarred by the 1999 Rugby World Cup failure.
I selected Richie McCaw, as I had seen that he was a special player and, although he was still young and raw, we needed an opensider. Taine Randell patently wasn’t suited to the task. Ironically, I got slammed for that decision by the last specialist opensider to have played for the All Blacks, Josh Kronfeld. Josh told the media that it was ridiculous to choose players for the All Blacks straight out of the NPC. Kronfeld was an outstanding All Black in his time, but I guess he wouldn’t have shown the same bravery if he had to select the team. He wasn’t a coach at that time.
I admit what I did was a huge risk. But, then, I had had experience as a coach of successfully bringing youth through in England and at the Chiefs. I think the key is to have confidence in a youth-selection policy. If you haven’t done it before, then you will feel less secure than someone who has taken that route and seen it work.
I had done some homework on Richie’s character after having first seen him play for Otago, and I was convinced he was the business. I knew that he flew a glider, attended the prestigious Otago Boys’ High School and played a musical instrument (if you could call the bagpipes a musical instrument). He seemed like a well-rounded individual with leadership potential.
More than that, you could just see he had ability. Marty Holah was the next-best openside flanker at the time, and he was good – better than Taine Randell – but Richie just had a bit more than him. Some players just stand out. So, why use a competition process to determine selection when someone is so obviously outstanding? Richie was so far ahead of everyone else who was available. It would have been different if there wasn’t much between him and the next guy. At the time, there was a massive void in openside flankers in New Zealand.
The No. 7 (No. 6 in South Africa) and No. 8 perform a critical relationship in every New Zealand rugby side, hunting together towards the ball in attack and defence. The All Blacks lost the edge for a while when they stopped choosing specialist opensiders.
I was very much on my own when that first tour squad was chosen. The selectors hadn’t even been ratified when I made my first selection. The assistant coach was Robbie Deans, who had also applied for the main job but had narrowly missed out. Together, we decided the way forward, and that was when Robbie made the decision to stick with coaching the Crusaders. There wasn’t much time before the next World Cup, and if Robbie could coach the Crusaders, he would be nurturing the critical mass of All Blacks. My view was that if we could get away with one of us being at the coalface coaching Super 12 rugby, then we should go with it.
For some reason, there were people at the NZRU who questioned my decision to appoint Robbie and didn’t want him involved. There was enmity towards the Crusaders/Canterbury, and it remained like that during my entire stint. I am not sure why this was the case. To me, the Crusaders were a template of outstanding teamwork and reliability, which is precisely what I felt the All Blacks needed at the time after having taken the mental toll of being beaten by Australia.
There were people with flair and attacking abilities in the All Black side, but there was nothing in the cupboard, no trophies to show. For me, it was not about selecting the best individuals but about creating the best mix by building a reliable team of players who had belief in one another. And it was about winning. Once we achieved that, we could inject the X-factor into the group along the way.
At the time, each player used to be presented with a nine-page publication setting out their responsibilities as an All Black. For me, this tome was far too long, and the protocols I inherited at the All Blacks were a way to seek a crisis. When you box people in too tightly, they will try to find their independence and freedom. I thought the All Blacks were too tightly controlled and, in the era immediately before my period as coach, that had been reflected on the field by their lack of ambition and fear of making mistakes.
In my first weeks as the All Black coach, before we left for tour, there was no strategy or philosophy set out. I was thinking, ‘What does this team need? What really matters here?’
We had looked mentally soft at the end of the Bledisloe Cup game, and it seemed as if leadership was both a problem and a weakness. Australia were mentally our superiors and we were clueless about how to outsmart them. We could deal with the Springboks because they were physical, like us.
It quickly dawned on me that there were people in the NZRU who had pre-existing strategies that they wanted me to stick to. They wanted me to be a widget. But bravery and comfort do not go together at all, and I resolved to use all the coaching skills I had at my disposal to take the All Blacks in a different direction.