The first All Black game under my watch was against Ireland A in Belfast. As I walked past their change room at half-time, I could hear their coach, Declan Kidney, screaming, ‘Get the ball into the fookin’ air and fookin’ ho into these guys.’ I laughed because I had played in Ireland and knew how it worked there.
Robbie Deans and I had only had the players for 10 days at that point. After the game, which we won, although not convincingly, I went back to the team hotel with Robbie to analyse some of the game’s footage in order to select the Test team and create a skeleton training plan. While we were doing that, we became aware of something we’d almost forgotten – there had been nine debutants involved in that game.
So we decided to back our philosophy of lifting the mood and reintroducing the fun element of being an All Black and joined up with the team to celebrate. We bought each debutant a beer. The whole team looked at us in a bemused way, as if to say, ‘Jeez, what are you doing here?’
That was how the All Black culture was back then. The players’ reaction when we joined them for drinks strengthened my resolve to try to change that culture. Anton Oliver was the captain on that tour, and I sensed that he and some of the other senior players were resistant to change.
The Ireland game was the first Test match of my tenure, and irony of all ironies, my old digs mate and Waikato teammate Warren Gatland was the Ireland coach. And, Warren being Warren, he was determined to have some fun.
Our training sessions were held at Black Rock College, and Gats texted me incessantly to say that he was watching us train through one of the kitchen windows. Then I got one that said: ‘I’ve got some money on this game, so I’m going to get you!’
It was very special for me and Rob to stand on the pitch at Lansdowne Road as All Black coaches and former All Black players – number 840 (Rob) and number 940 (me). We looked at each other and said, ‘Here we go …!’
The apprehension I felt going into that first Test wasn’t helped when, with his first touch of the ball, Richie McCaw dropped it. The thought then went through my mind momentarily that maybe Josh Kronfeld had been right – perhaps you can’t choose All Blacks out of the NPC.
In the first half, we were too static and coughed up a heck of a lot of possession. Disaster seemed to be looming when we went into half-time 7-16 down, and my mood wasn’t helped by the fact that Gatland was extremely animated in the seat alongside mine. I could see out of the corner of my eye that he was waving his hands about in glee, but I didn’t dare look directly at him.
I was concerned at the mood I encountered in our dressing room during the break. I normally had a set pattern of solution-based aspects I covered with the team and I tried to get the players to own their response, but it was clear that the guys were shell-shocked. They looked like they hadn’t yet recovered from the Bledisloe defeat in Sydney, and they were at a loss as to how to deal with the current situation.
As we left to head back to our seats, the first thing I did was turn to Robbie: ‘Mate, this group is going to require a lot of mental work.’
There was too much anxiety in the team; there was no calm. And when the player leaders did speak, they were overexcited. It wasn’t intentional, but some of the leaders in the group were actually creating the anxiety. The communication just wasn’t effective. The navigators in the team, such as the No. 9 and No. 10, have to have a clear line of communication with the captain. If the navigators and captain aren’t in sync, then there’s a massive problem. And that seemed to be the case that day in Dublin.
I was scrutinising the captain very closely that day. Anton Oliver had some wonderful qualities, but he also seemed to have two different personalities. He was highly intelligent, but he could also be extremely gruff. He was an amazing physical athlete who almost over-thought the game, though in my opinion he was at his best when he didn’t over-think it.
But there were mitigating circumstances in that terrible first-half performance against Ireland. It would have been hard for the players to suddenly adjust to a new management after having played under Wayne Smith. They had to learn new stuff and, as mentioned, there were several debutants in the squad. Add to that the fact that the Test team had only had three days to prepare, as the midweek team had played against Ireland A.
After half-time, though, the players and the combinations started to find each other. At that point, we were good at kick receipt, so Ireland kicking onto us was exactly what we wanted. The momentum shifted in our favour quite quickly. Richie McCaw recovered from his early mistake to play a real corker of a debut match, and he was quite justifiably named Man of the Match afterwards. Obviously, I was ecstatic about that.
We ended up winning 42-29, scoring some outstanding tries in the second half. I really enjoyed the last 30 minutes of that performance – once I knew we weren’t going to lose. Before that, the prospect of a negative outcome in my first Test as coach had been quite terrifying.
After the game, Richie McCaw was on a huge high after his first Test match. He went into town with the guys to have some fun. He had total confidence in his ability, but he also had a nice way about him. He even asked me how he could improve. He may have been in the pub but he was still looking for pointers not only on how to improve his play, but also his preparation.
After 2003, Richie would experience some challenges when he took on the greater responsibility that comes with leadership. Although there is the fame that accompanies being a celebrated All Black as well as the captain, there are also many more demands made on you. But Richie managed to park the things that got in his way, and that demands huge discipline.
It goes without saying that Warren Gatland was extremely annoyed after that Dublin game. He knew he’d had a good chance of making history against a newly coached and selected All Black side. But our teamwork had already started to come through. We had spotted tackle weaknesses in the Ireland side and managed to get our play to those areas.
The Test against Scotland in Edinburgh was the middle game of that tour. We won it fairly comfortably (37-6), but the Scots are a difficult team to play against sometimes – even if you win well on the scoreboard, they can make you look bad. We probably degenerated during the course of the tour from the Irish Test through to the last match of the tour, in Argentina.
My emotions don’t fluctuate wildly up and down but, like everyone, I do get nervous, and when I could see the momentum of a game change, I tended to think about how the media and public would react to a poor outcome. That Argentina Test was one such moment. With just one minute left on the clock, we were trailing.
‘How am I going to deal with being the first All Black coach to lose to Argentina?’ I thought to myself as the clock ran down.
I was chewing my gum with increased intensity, when, fortunately, the Pumas kicked the ball poorly and we were able to score and steal the win (24-20). Phew! It hadn’t been a good place for me, and that was very worrying.
As I have said already, context gives meaning to content. If you think negatively, that will come through in the content, and one of the big things I learnt on that first All Black tour was that you have to have strong self-belief.
There was a really funny moment in that Argentina Test – or at least, it seems funny now. Mark Robinson passed the ball to Doug Howlett on the try line and Dougie dropped the ball, allowing the Pumas to score. That brought the Pumas back into the game before a huge crowd at Mar del Plata. And when the Pumas get momentum in front of their noisy crowd, they become an irresistible force.
In the end, we came back and snuck the win, and Dougie showed some humour in the change room afterwards. ‘Boys, thanks very much for that victory, you have made my summer.’ It was a perfect ending to a nerve-wracking experience.
There was a wonderful relationship between the Kiwis and the Pumas at that time, and Agustín Pichot drove a car full of All Black players back to the hotel that night. Later we heard that one of the All Blacks was strewn on a park bench near the hotel, holding court with the locals. The hotel concierge was extremely concerned about this and phoned me. The way he put it reminded me of Spanish waiter Manuel in the classic British TV comedy Fawlty Towers: ‘Player in park! Player in park!’ he kept repeating.
‘What do you mean, “Player in park”?’ I asked him.
It turned out to be Dougie. Clearly, he’d done his best during the evening to obliterate his near costly mistake.
I didn’t make a big issue of it, though. As long as the players didn’t go overboard, there was a time and a place for fun, I believed. But I know that the manager, Andrew Martin, cringed. In the tour report, he was scathing. He didn’t like the direction we had taken. Martin had a military background and his approach was in conflict with what we were aiming to achieve. I never saw him as a facilitator but as a crisis manager, and I struggled with that.
I felt that there was a lot of unnecessary crisis management on that tour. For instance, at the end of the trip, Martin was determined to save costs, so we had to take a route home that felt more like a world tour. Instead of flying back more or less directly, we ended up going from Buenos Aires to Miami, then to Los Angeles, and from there on to Auckland. It meant 40 hours of flying, and it was just after 9/11, so it wasn’t easy to travel in big groups, particularly through the US. One of our props, Taranaki boy Greg Feek, had a thrombosis from all the air travel. That was not what you needed at the end of a tour.
When we got back and the end-of-tour reports were submitted, it became obvious that the manager and I were not on the same page. I sensed that the change to some of the contract conditions was a big issue with him. My philosophy, both on and off the field, clashed with the pre-existing culture and management structure. And it didn’t go down well with the NZRU.
My policy was to try to get the players to relax between games, and having a drink to do so was taken out of context. David Rutherford, the NZRU chief executive, challenged me on it. He said that I should never be seen in public having a beer. I told him that that was the way I was brought up. I have never been afraid of going to a pub and hearing people’s opinions. You don’t learn anything by sitting in your room. When Wayne Smith was coach, he would lock himself away. Christian Cullen later wrote in his book that I promoted a drinking culture (he wasn’t on that tour, but he did play under me later), but that was garbage. The problem was that my more social approach was in conflict with the previous management’s culture. However, I was prepared to challenge and change the existing team protocol, as I thought it was too restrictive, as was shown during our first tour.
I hadn’t even initiated the post-match team celebration. In fact, under my regime, I introduced a breathalyser test that we administered every morning at 9 a.m. The players and coaches had to be under the drink-driving limit, and we had measures in place to change unacceptable behaviour. Although we were not turning a blind eye to drinking, I did feel that the players were adults and that we could get more out of them if we treated them as such. They knew that they had to keep to their side of the bargain by behaving responsibly off the field.
We introduced the breathalyser test because the players’ recovery is very important in professional sport. You can’t just get carried away celebrating after a game any more. It was our way of keeping a register, privately, within the group. Obviously, there were times when certain people got close to the margin, including me, and when that happened, we dealt with it, albeit in a fun and educational way to raise the culprit’s self-awareness.
It should be noted that, during my time as coach, no one was put in jail, no one was photographed by the paparazzi bollocksed out of their minds in public and players weren’t jumping out of hotel-room windows. We had a common-sense environment and, if you buggered up, then the team protocols would take care of you.
As we had zero in the trophy cabinet when I took over and the team performance was not there, I felt that creating a more relaxed environment would be a way of achieving better performance. But guys from the previous regime weren’t happy about my approach. Along with Andrew Martin, Anton Oliver also challenged my leadership.
You have to remember that in 2001 we had less than two years to prepare to win the World Cup – we didn’t have the luxury of a four-year run-up, and I was taking over from someone else. Wayne Smith had been with John Hart when he was All Black coach in 1999, and Hart was seen as a control freak. I don’t think it was Wayne who was into all the protocols that were introduced – I think it might have been the manager and the NZRU.
All of this is not to suggest that I didn’t make mistakes. I did make mistakes – lots of them and, looking back, I know I should have been far more holistic in my approach than I was. The problem was that because we had so little time to prepare for the World Cup, I was completely focused on performance and everything else became less of a priority.
During the course of the following year, 2002, the media started to label me as a poor communicator – and I guess that was true. I realise now how much fun you can have with the media and how important they are, and that you can use the press to your advantage without being totally truthful or betraying anyone.
But, back then, because I was totally focused on performance targets, I unintentionally gave the impression that other elements of my role, including the media and the message we put out, were unimportant. I was guarded about what I said because I wanted to keep it inside my circle.
I particularly struggled with the commitments that you were expected to make to radio. The radio networks in New Zealand all belong to the same network, really, so I could never understand why all the small-town DJs wanted separate interviews. Sometimes there were about 200 requests a week. I don’t care how good you are on the radio, that can become too much.
There was so much coming at me at once that I got a bit mixed up in my preparation. The media play a huge part in the game, but some rugby people struggle with that. I remember a media training session organised by the NZRU where Mark ‘Cowboy’ Shaw, who was on my selection panel at the time, just walked out halfway through, saying: ‘I don’t need this shit.’
There were also little things that irritated me about the press. I had decided my theme with the All Blacks would be ‘the journey’, and the media lambasted me for that. They couldn’t understand what I was on about – but did I really need to explain to them what the word ‘journey’ means? The media started to question some of the things I said and I felt they were being petty. Clearly, their perception was that I wasn’t being authentic. And, again, I accept that charge: I was 37 years old, and I was on my guard with them.
I remember one media briefing in Melbourne that took place just after a training session. I had decided to get in some running with the boys, but when I turned up at the press conference with a bit of sweat on my brow, I was criticised.
At that time there were lots of eccentric journalists around, such as Martin Devlin and sports broadcaster/talk-show host Murray Deaker, who was never going to be my favourite person. Deaker always seemed to have a problem with something. I know that was his job, but when you read his book and he says that the best day for him is when the All Blacks have lost and it is raining in Auckland, then you have to worry for him.
After a while, I learnt that everything I said could be taken out of context, so the less I said, the less chance there was of that happening. Don’t get me wrong – I do have respect for the rugby media, both now and also back then. Wynne Gray didn’t agree with everything I did, but I have a huge amount of respect for him, and the two Australian writers Wayne Smith and Greg Growden are both journalists whom I hold in high regard.
I never had a problem with the media when I was in Britain. After the 2000 Six Nations victory and my return to New Zealand, the English press took me out for dinner. And, ironically, when I was working with Clive Woodward, I was seen as the guy with whom they could communicate. Stephen Jones, Paul Ackford, Mick Cleary, Chris Hewitt and Peter Jackson were awesome guys, and we had a great relationship.
Maybe the problem is that New Zealand rugby is a bit of a goldfish bowl. There is just so much focus on the All Blacks, and the journos have to have content all the time. I couldn’t understand why Martin Devlin would carve me up with every step I took. I think he was in a pretty angry space in his life at that point, for I have no problem communicating with him now. He’s a sports lover and I now understand where he’s coming from completely.
When I got back from that first tour I wasn’t too bothered by the negative media reaction because I was focusing on performance. And I could understand the negativity in the sense that I knew I had made changes that people, as well as the NZRU, weren’t ready for. Change creates resistance. Nevertheless, I knew we needed to change. People forget that when I took over, the All Blacks were at Ground Zero.
The NZRU didn’t like the philosophy that was developing and after that first tour, they let me know it. A recurring theme was their disappointment that I had chosen Robbie Deans as my assistant. Perhaps they wanted me on my own, as that way I might have been more pliable in their hands.
After the first tour, I was also acutely aware of how scarred some of the players still were by the 1999 World Cup failure. The World Cup is something you are reminded of all the time in New Zealand, and it would take me four years to deal with my World Cup failure later on. The difference between South Africa and New Zealand is that the Springboks can drop back into society after a World Cup defeat, as there are 50 million people in the country, not all of whom are interested in rugby. If South Africa were made up of only the five million whites and other population groups that are fanatical about rugby, that might be different.
After a World Cup defeat, the reverberations are massive in New Zealand, and it doesn’t help that just about everyone there is a rugby historian. The milkman, the postman, even the lady in the shop, will catch you by surprise: ‘I’ve been dying to ask you such and such …’
At the start of the 2002 international season, I had to name a new captain after Anton Oliver ruptured his Achilles during the Super 12. Before the injury, I had travelled to Dunedin to speak to him. I told him that I could sense that there was tension between us, but that I was going to stick to the track I had chosen and it was up to him to decide if we could work together. I thought we could, but the Achilles injury scuppered any chance of finding that out.
There were two candidates to take over the captaincy. Tana Umaga was the leader in terms of performance, but Reuben Thorne had been an extremely successful captain at the Crusaders. Robbie Deans was coaching the Crusaders and they won 13 games in a row on their way to winning the Super 12 title. The guys looked up to Reuben and he was a calming influence. So I opted for him.
It was a special moment in my life to let Reuben’s wife know that I was coming around to inform him that he was going to be captain. His family were all there when I arrived, so he was able to celebrate with them.
We had a relatively sedate start to the 2002 season, with two Tests against Ireland, a Test against Italy and another against Fiji. We struggled a bit in a night game in Dunedin against Ireland before winning 15-6, but won the other games comfortably enough, although our performances were not spectacular.
I think I unsettled the guys somewhat when we introduced some measures with which to test them, such as sprint and strength tests, and a three-kilometre run to test fitness, which hadn’t previously happened. So, in the week of the Fiji match, we told them that if they didn’t do well enough in the tests, then they wouldn’t play in the game. We figured that we were set to beat Fiji, even if we had a physically taxing week in the build-up.
Tana Umaga complained. He said that he couldn’t understand why he had to be put through a timed three-kilometre run when he only ran 30 metres at a time in a match.
After these Tests we had a couple of training camps where we started to zero in on our best side. Jeff Wilson was never brought back in, but I recalled some of the other big-name players I had left out of my first tour in 2002. None of them would make it to the 2003 World Cup.
One of the big problems I could see looming was the condition of Jonah Lomu. We held a camp in Whangamata, which was my attempt to give the outlying communities a chance to see the All Blacks and connect with them. However, I was accused of going against the wishes of the marketing department at the NZRU. I think those at the NZRU failed to understand how badly some of the players suffered from hotel fatigue. They were so used to staying in the same hotels in the major cities during the Super 12 that I felt a change of environment would do them good. The NZRU didn’t like it, but sometimes you have to think of the athlete’s needs.
The interest that was created with the camp was incredible. There are only about 5 000 people living in Whangamata in mid-winter, but probably 30 000 to 40 000 during the summer, because it is a holiday place. The number of people who arrived in buses was unbelievable, and it created a great atmosphere at the camp.
During our time there I started to address Jonah’s fitness situation. He had just returned from an advertising photo shoot in London, and I met with him and his agent, Phil Kingsley-Jones. I felt that I knew more about Jonah’s condition at that stage than they did. They seemed a bit oblivious to it. To me, the problem was obvious, because he was faring badly in the fitness tests. By the end, he was outside the 16-minute mark for the three-kilometre run.
I told Jonah and Phil that I was concerned about his performances, and I made it clear that, at the rate he was going, he was not going to make it to the 2003 World Cup. I was prepared to give him a window: I told him that he had to perform on the 2002 end-of-year tour. I could tell there was something wrong, though. He wasn’t recovering well from his training. But, at the time, no one knew about the kidney ailment that was to end his career prematurely.
I felt really awful about it, but we had done the testing, and the results were impossible to ignore. Apart from in the three-kilometre-run test, his repeat speed tests indicated a 60 per cent decline.
We needed a wing who would be prepared to work hard, and we found him in the form of Caleb Ralph, who was a former 400-metre runner and had an amazing ability to still be available inside the ball. McCaw used to try to chase down Ralph in the three-kilometre run. Caleb would finish in around 10.20, and Richie in about 10.30. Richie and Caleb were machines.
Before the first Tri-Nations Test of that year, against Australia, we had a camp at Hanmer Springs. I got former All Black Mark Shaw in to speak to the players. Mark had a very rough-and-ready approach and he smoked while addressing them. I could see the players were quite taken aback at this blast from the past.
On match day in Christchurch, the weather turned terrible. I had friends from Western Australia on the terraces who went home at half-time to sit in a hot bath. We won 12-6 and succeeded in our plan of penetrating through the vacuum at the tail of their line-out.
I wasn’t popular with Tana Umaga in the build-up to that Test. Tana had been out for six weeks with a medial ligament injury, but felt he was now ready to play again. He took badly to not being selected, as long-term All Blacks usually expect to preserve their places. He thought once his preparation had been done he would be ready. I disagreed. To be honest, I don’t have much recollection of that Test, except that it was just flipping freezing!
It was good for us to beat Australia, but there were two Bledisloe Cup games in those days, which meant we were only halfway to recapturing the trophy, something we had been unable to do for several seasons.
We played the Springboks in Wellington in our second match. It was an interesting build-up. Tana had again not been selected (we used Mark Robinson instead), and it just happened to be a game where the All Blacks had fewer Islanders in the team than usual. Former All Black Chris Laidlaw labelled my selection as racist, and the Bok coach, Rudolf Straeuli, then jumped on the bandwagon. I couldn’t understand what it had to do with him, so when we crossed paths on the way to the media conference before the game, I pulled him aside and asked him what the hell he was up to.
Rudolf mumbled something to the effect that it wasn’t him. I didn’t think his comments were appropriate, as he had no idea about the number of injuries we had at that point and which players were being managed.
Although Werner Greeff scored an early try for the Boks, we won the game comfortably. Justin Marshall had an exceptional game. Christian Cullen played, but it was clear to me that he wasn’t the same running threat any more. He was just never upfront about his injury, and it was the same with Jonah. Of course, I realise players are entitled to medical confidentiality, but the medical team is so overly discreet that it sometimes makes life difficult for coaches.
Then we went to Sydney for what we hoped would be the moment we regained the Bledisloe Cup. We started well when Richie scored a try through a poor Wallaby line-out tap, but we couldn’t get away from our opposition. During that game it started to become evident that Andrew Mehrtens was becoming a liability in the tackle. Eddie Jones had put David Lyons at No. 8 and he just lined Mehrts up and went for it all game.
Australia managed to get some momentum late in the match, but we were still leading when, in the last ruck of the game, André Watson penalised Leon MacDonald. To this day, I still don’t know what that penalty was for! Matthew Burke kicked it from the angle to win the game 16-14 for Australia. It was incredibly frustrating to have been just one minute short of winning the Bledisloe Cup in my first year.
And it didn’t help that, after the game, the Wallabies displayed an attitude that I can only describe as typically Aussie. They handle success differently from the All Blacks and the Springboks and seem to sense your body language if you are weak.
Before going to the post-match reception, I had told my players that they could choose how to accept the loss. I told them to look the Aussies in the eye, stand tall and accept the defeat with humility. I said words to the effect that although one didn’t always have a choice how one would lose, one had a choice to come back. And I had to do my own head exercise as well, as that was my first defeat as All Black coach.
Next stop was Durban. I got the group together and made it clear that I wanted total commitment from them. I was very succinct as I pulled them together at a captain’s run and told them what needed to be done.
We started the game quite well, even though Neil de Kock scored an early try for the Boks. The Bok defensive game was poor in those days, and we could exploit their midfielders. Under Straeuli, they used to turn in on defence and we played that to our advantage. The Boks got confused because the Kiwi players tend to go from out to in, and what people don’t understand is how good the All Blacks are at playing the gap and exploiting it.
That was the game during which a spectator, Piet van Zyl, came running onto the field to tackle referee Dave McHugh. Initially, I thought he was a Springbok player, as he was wearing a Bok shirt and I hadn’t spotted that he was wearing jeans. He walked around the scrum and A.J. Venter and Richie McCaw got hold of him. I spoke to McHugh afterwards, as I knew him from the circuit. He was as pale as a ghost and, being Irish, he was already white enough as it was. McHugh was an interesting guy – he never drank a single beer, just copious pints of milk.
We held on to win the game 30-23 despite the tide turning in favour of the Boks at one stage of the second half, and I remember thinking that we were going to lose, as we had to resist wave after wave of Bok attacks. But I had been watching the stadium clock, which turned out to be wrong, and I was pleasantly surprised when the final whistle blew. I thought that there were still several minutes to endure, and, if there had been, we would not have won.
That victory enabled us to win the Tri-Nations, which to New Zealanders may not be as significant as the Bledisloe, but it is nonetheless a major trophy. We hadn’t seen it for a couple of years, so at last there was something to put into that empty trophy cabinet back in Wellington.