RUGBY
Grant Shimmin inWellington
One of the more dramatic ironies of the rugby year is that the team that finished bottom of the Tri-Nations log is the only one still to have the same national coach it started the year with.
Then again, South Africa don’t have that many potential Bok coaches left to hire and fire.
As many as they may have let go in the past decade, though, none of the men to coach the Boks since readmission has left under circumstances quite as odd as those surrounding Wayne Smith’s departure from the New Zealand head coach’s role, confirmed as permanent this week when 37-year-old John Mitchell emerged from a list of 22 applicants to take over at the All Black helm.
Smith’s request to the New Zealand Rugby Football Union to readvertise the position, followed by his decision to reapply, followed still later by a press conference in Christchurch where he said he still wanted the job was, it seems, an ungainly attempt to stop the rot, stifle the criticism of his side and himself, a move not unlike FW de Klerk’s calling of the 1992 referendum to gauge reaction to his reforms. It didn’t have the same degree of assurance or calculation, though, and as it turned out, neither did it have the same result.
Clearly the man who led the Crusaders to the first two of their three Super 12 titles was not that comfortable with the criticism, from media and elsewhere, that came his way, often leaving the talking to his number two, Tony Gilbert, whose own inadequacies had made him the favourite for the chop when a review panel assessed his and Smith’s time in charge.
Given that many expected Gilbert to make way for a genuine forward coach quite possibly Mitchell, to assist Smith, his decision to jump the gun on the panel’s findings may havebeen ill-conceived, but we’ll never know now.
On the positive side for the All Blacks, Mitchell is unlikely to have trouble ”fronting up” to the media and the public. As he pointed out, his time as England assistant coach exposed him to the ravenous tabloid press, which will put New Zealand’s relatively tame in just about everything but rugby media into perspective for him.
He’s already talking about changes and it wouldn’t be surprising to see a few more players from his Chiefs franchise make next month’s tour to Britain and Argentina. It also wouldn’t be a surprise, given the lift in the level of the Chiefs play in Mitchell’s only Super 12 campaign, to see a harder edge to the All Blacks’ play as the next World Cup approaches.