Ian Foster: New Zealand ‘still a level below’ northern hemisphere as Sir Steve Hansen urges NZR to ‘stop the internal bickering’

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Former All Blacks head coach Ian Foster insists that New Zealand Rugby (NZR) still have plenty of catching up to do after falling behind their rivals over recent years.

The 2023 Rugby World Cup runner-up felt that they became “very isolated” after Covid struck, resulting in them getting an unrealistic view of their own game.

Foster’s All Blacks struggled following the 2019 global tournament and only really recovered at the end of 2022 before they had an impressive campaign at the World Cup in France.

However, there are still some structural issues within NZR, as well as the game as a whole in the country, which Foster believes is hampering the national team.

‘Not good for the players’

“In Covid, we became very isolated for obvious reasons and we basically spent two years playing ourselves. In order to generate interest, and it’s a pretty tough market to generate interest, we were telling people that Super Rugby was the best competition in the world,” he told The Times’ The Ruck podcast.

“If a player played well then Super Rugby coaches were saying he’s the best player in the world, but really we were just playing ourselves. Even if some of that might be true, at a certain level, it’s certainly not a good thing for the mindset of the player.

“Suddenly you hit the international stage and the rest of the world have carried on playing and growing. It wasn’t really until 2023 that I really believed we could start catching up.”

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The waning interest in their premier club competition, Super Rugby, has not helped the Antipodean cause, while the departure of the South African franchises have potentially hampered them too.

In contrast, tournaments in the north continue to be strong. The Top 14 has turned into a behemoth while the United Rugby Championship has developed significantly since the introduction of the Bulls, Lions, Sharks and Stormers.

Although the Premiership has endured its financial issues, the product on the field has been excellent and they had their first sell-out final at Twickenham since 2015 last month.

Despite the current Champions Cup not having the lustre of its predecessor, the standard remains very high with the final between Toulouse and Leinster particularly exceptional.

“By the end of it (2023) we were getting close to where we want to be, but that period has done some damage. Structurally, we’re still a level below. Super Rugby and the NPC is struggling in terms of how we see its place,” Foster added.

“We still aren’t really as dominant in that age-group rugby, which was always a given really, and now we struggle against a lot of the bigger teams with the systems the other countries have put in place.”

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Sir Steve Hansen’s view

Sir Steve Hansen agreed with Foster and pointed to the current issues with the governing body as a cause following the recent infighting and threat of civil war.

The New Zealand Rugby Players’ Association intend to break away from NZR after a vote was passed which did not implement the recommendations of an independent review.

“There’s an ongoing problem with the governance of our game so that’s the first thing we have to sort out. Stop the internal bickering and do what’s right for the game,” Hansen said.

“The first round of votes didn’t do that, so that’s disappointing. Once you do that, once you get the right people driving the game, then you can start fixing some of the problems.

“Ian mentioned we haven’t been as dominant at underage as we have been in the past, so it’s looking at making sure we’ve got the right people driving those programmes.

“Is our Super Rugby competition as good as we think it is? And is it providing what we need at Test level to produce Test rugby players?

“The biggest thing I want to change is the governance of the game, which is the key to every door.”