New Zealand Rugby Chief Executive Addresses Steve Hansen Rumours

New Zealand Rugby Chief Executive Addresses Steve Hansen Rumours

New Zealand Rugby chief executive Steve Tew addressed the ongoing rumours surrounding Steve Hansen's future with the All Blacks in an exclusive interview with Stuff.co.nz writer Marc Hinton.

 

 

The NZRU boss clarified two important aspects of the process involving the decision around who will coach the All Blacks following next year's World Cup in Japan and emphatically denied that a director of rugby role has either been, or is being, created to entice Hansen back to oversee a revamped All Blacks' setup.


 

 


He also denied reports that the incumbent coach had already been offered a two-year extension to continue through until the end of 2021.

 

 

The NZ Rugby chief did confirm that he was expecting to hear a decision from Hansen on whether he wanted to be considered beyond 2019 before the end of the month.

 

 

"Steve has now signalled he will make a decision and announcement before the end of the year on what his preferred future will be," said Tew on Saturday. "That's helpful. We've obviously heard [Ireland's Kiwi coach] Joe Schmidt do the same thing, so that's another piece of information that gets fed into it.

 
 

"Steve has been very clear he wanted to have some time after the tour to sit back and reflect and talk to his family. He didn't want to distract from the tour, and I think he'll leave it till after the ASB awards as well because that's another focus for other people."

 

 

 

But Tew emphasised that the highly successful All Blacks coach is not deciding on a specific role that has been offered to him, contrary to reports in some media outlets.

 

 

"The board hasn't made a call on the reappointment of Steve … that's another conversation we'd have to have when we know what his thinking is," he added.

"All I've said to our team, because we're the ones communicating this, is that we should prepare as though we're looking for a coach, and then we're ready. And if we don't need to then that's fine but at least be ready for it."

 

 

A report out of Ireland that quoted former All Blacks and pundits Jeff Wilson and Justin Marshall saying Hansen was set to be offered a newly created director of rugby position with the All Blacks post-2019.

 

Asked if such a position was being planned, Tew said: "We don't have a director of rugby in the sense you're talking about but we certainly have a high performance director and he is heavily involved in all our high performance programmes.

 

 

"Last time I looked Marshy and Goldie weren't running NZ Rugby. I'm not sure where that information came from. We are not working on a director of rugby role as I speak."

 

Tew also said a recent report that indicated Hansen had a two-year contract extension offer in front of him was "not true".

 

Asked to clarify that Hansen's looming decision was purely about his availability and not deciding on a specific role, Tew replied: "That's correct. No one has been offered anything post-2019 in terms of the coaching staff."

 

 

Tew did confirm that if a new All Blacks coach had to be appointed, that process would be contestable and would not play out until after next year's World Cup.

"We will run a very thorough but quick review of the campaign, and if we're looking for a coach we'll go to the market after RWC. We've got little bit of time. We'd like to have a new coaching structure in place before Christmas of '19.

"The reason for doing it this way is it allows the campaign to go ahead uninterrupted. Clearly there are people involved in the campaign that may well be candidates for a future position and you don't want that to become a distraction."

 

Tew also offered an interesting response when asked if he was surprised Schmidt had effectively removed himself from contention for the All Blacks job by confirming he would be taking a break from coaching after RWC.

 

 

"We stay in contact … he has signalled for a long time he wanted to get home, just when that happened was the point. He's signalling now he wants to have a break from coaching. Those of us that have watched him develop into a world leading coach would hope that break is not too long."

 

Full Story via:  Stuff

Latest News