Sam Whitelock: What it was like inside the Ian Foster-Razor split

The following is an extract from 'Samuel Whitelock: View from the Second Row'

If there is one question I get asked more than any other as an All Black, it is this: ‘What is [insert name] really like?’ Often the question is directly about my coaches. That’s a hard one to answer honestly. Every rugby coach at the professional level knows the game inside out. They might have more specialist coaching expertise in specific areas, but as a person they have been immersed in the game for most of their lives.

They want to win, too. I have yet to play under a head coach who hasn’t wanted the best for their team. There are times when I might not have agreed with certain selections, tactics or strategies, but I have (almost always) known they are making those calls for the right reasons.

When people ask that question, then, they’re not really interested in what I think of the coach technically, but in how we get on personally.

I like to keep the details of my coach–player relationships fairly private. If I didn’t agree with a coach, or was struggling to get on the same page as them, I would have those conversations in private.

The trickiest period I’ve had to negotiate in this respect was, not surprisingly, during the Ian Foster/Scott Robertson debate which in reality covered nearly the entirety of the 2020 to 2023 World Cup cycle. Fozzie was always going to be a favourite to get the top job when Shag retired at the end of 2019, but Razor’s success at every level he had worked at, from age-group through to Super Rugby, made him a genuinely compelling candidate.

When the All Blacks started losing in ways they never had and against teams they never had, Foster’s position became precarious and in 2022 it was widely reported that Razor had been prepped to take over, only for Fozzie to ‘save’ his job with a win against South Africa at Johannesburg.

I know both men well, and had worked closely with both. So I had a tremendous amount of respect and affection for both. I took zero pleasure in Fozzie’s struggles and never publicly advocated for one over the other. Being a Crusaders lifer, every man and his dog wanted to know if I thought Razor should be brought in to take over from Fozzie. It was never my decision, and nor should it have been, so I tried not to waste any energy thinking about it.

I played under three All Blacks head coaches, and they were all, to some extent, products of their upbringing and vocations. Graham Henry was a former school principal who watched over everything with a helicopter view and a discerning eye. Steve Hansen was a former cop, always needing to know everything that was happening in the background. And Fozzie, a clergyman’s son, was a very caring, empathetic guy who believed in fairness.

What was Ted really like? Honestly, I didn’t have a lot to do with him. In some ways I treated him like a Year 9 would treat the principal. I’d keep my head down and hope that I didn’t attract his attention. The only time we really talked was on the Grand Slam tour in 2010, when we had a chat about my grandfather, Nelson Dalzell, who had played every Test on the tour of Great Britain and France in 1953–54.

Ted was the head coach I needed at the start of my All Blacks career. I didn’t need somebody constantly in my ear and filling me up with detail. He wanted me to work things out for myself. Like a good headmaster, he let me know when I’d done something wrong, but he wasn’t micromanaging every aspect of my rugby education.

Shag was definitely a cop, keeping a close eye on everything like a detective. He could also be brutally gruff, in keeping with his persona. He had no trouble looking a player in the eye and giving him a blunt and brutal gee-up. What Shag did brilliantly was come into the top job from being an assistant and immediately set new goals, making them extremely tough and aspirational. He intuitively knew that, as a continuity appointment, under his watch things could easily get stale if he didn’t push the team in new directions.

We got great evidence of that when the press revealed a message on a whiteboard in our team room that said we wanted to be known as the ‘most dominant team’ in history. Steve was obsessed by going back-to-back as world champions and being the first All Blacks team to win a World Cup away from home.

His leadership was really fresh for some of the older guys, who had been around for a while, whereas I was still new, so I was going to be excited no matter what direction we were headed in.

My own relationship with Steve was the most complicated of any of the coaches I have had. I have to frame everything I write here by acknowledging that I believe everything he did had the intention of getting the best out of me. Do I think he went about it the right way? No, I don’t, and there were times when his prodding of me probably had the opposite effect. If I had my time again, I would have brought the matter to a head earlier, because I let him chip away at my confidence more than I should have.

Shag was the coach who dropped me in 2013, saying my play had become one-paced. He was the head coach so I had to listen to what he said. I could argue until the cows came home, but ultimately there were just three people I needed to impress. You can stop anybody in the street and ask them for their best XV and their favoured players in each position, and they’ll have their own opinion, but it means nothing unless they happen to be one of the three All Blacks selectors. And at that stage I wasn’t impressing those men.

Steve was a great rugby coach. His first four or five years in charge of the All Blacks were close to flawless. We were dominating rugby, and it was invigorating to be part of that.

The World Cup win in 2015 cemented his legacy. We couldn’t repeat that in 2019, though, and it’s fair to say Shag and I didn’t finish on the same page, as I was dropped for his final match in charge, the bronze-medal playoff win against Wales. I’d gone from playing every game I was available for to not making the 23. Shag and his assistants, including Fozzie, knew I was pissed off about that. I didn’t bother hiding my emotion. They wanted to give others opportunities, and that’s what they did.

Extracted with permission from Samuel Whitelock: View from the Second Row, ($49.99 RRP HarperCollins Publishers Aotearoa New Zealand), available now.

This article was first published on nzherald.co.nz and is republished here with permission