Sports 🏉 Rugby

[snake77]

Razor had success with every team he was Head Coach of prior to the ABs and lots of that has been credited to, in part, to how he themed their campaigns. Once he got to the Crusaders he began to be more tight lipped about these but when he won Div 2 in Christchurch club rugby it was around building to the Crest of the Wave. I also heard him speak after one of his first NPC titles & my memory is a bit hazy but I think it had something to do with mustering wild horses in North America. Unsure how one would formulate one of these & get everyone to buy into it when your main goal is 4 years away I'm sure there'll eventually be a book divulging it all & more

The only instance of giving a theme to a campaign at an international level is McClennan with the Kiwis when they used the term (Samurai maybe) that meant constantly improving. I can see that working for a small campaign like the Kiwis in a Tri Nations. Improve and peak during the finals. There may have been others but that is the main instance that comes to mind.

To me it is probably easier to them a campaign for a tournament or a tour compared to a few one-off tests. Like Matthew Ridge wrote about Lowe being a motivational coach and you get tired of the messaging or it repeats. At some point the themes would repeat or you'd struggle to come up with one.


It will be interesting to see what comes out of this or what NZ Rugby learns from it.

He had success in the areas you'd want from a potential coach, seeing as they want the coach to be local and available for selection.

The media articles will be interesting. How many reporters are now reporting on they knew there were issues, how long they have known, had seen issues etc. But their previous articles were how things were shaky but improving, this area of their game looks exciting etc.

 

[Cces]

The only instance of giving a theme to a campaign at an international level is McClennan with the Kiwis when they used the term (Samurai maybe) that meant constantly improving.

Kaizen

 

[JustLikeStartingOver]

This whole saga shows that sports media in NZ, especially lead rugby writer, once a coveted and respected position, is just an eroded pile of nothing*

Fans will do podcasts for free that contain more insight than our print publications can come up with. TV coverage is a whole lot of former players just saying “I don’t know, give it more time”.

Not one decent story about why things weren’t working, why did his assistant quit, why do they keep picking these old washed-up players, presumably they knew some of these things, but were so cowed by the union, wouldn’t say a word about it until very late into last year.

In hindsight it seems obvious that motivating the crusaders through yet another super rugby campaign, when everyone else has their eye on the test season, won’t be relevant at all for the All Blacks job.

But, I bought the appointment, so did a majority of fans who were sick of the way Foster had been handed the job and immediately performances declined.

Seemed like a good time for a break from the henry tapped hansen, hansen tapped foster way things had been run.

People thought we would be getting new players, new tactics, new dawn but they mostly played boring rugby, the forwards were good enough to handle lesser teams (like Australia) but anyone who showed up with a bit of fire in the eyes, the ABs would roll over or muddle across the line unconvincingly.

34 year old beauden barrett limping his way through games while his captain brother is patronised by the ref, none of it turned out the way it was hoped.

* to keep it league related, the warriors shit 2024 year was barely reported on either, how they went from immaculate vibes in 2023 to that, dont recall any investigation at all about why that was, wouldn't want to upset anyone at Mt Smart HQ going forward

 

[snake77]

This whole saga shows that sports media in NZ, especially lead rugby writer, once a coveted and respected position, is just an eroded pile of nothing*

Fans will do podcasts for free that contain more insight than our print publications can come up with. TV coverage is a whole lot of former players just saying “I don’t know, give it more time”.

Agree with the rest of your post.

The above points are something that should be highlighted. Some of our rugby media arrogantly say NZ fans are passionate about rugby but don't know anything. Then they write articles that aren't very technical. One likes to fill his articles with adjectives like they hit the ruck with technical accuracy (MMA fans used to laugh at "his precision is precise" this isn't far off that). You can go on YouTube and get better breakdowns.

One YouTuber I occasionally watch breaks down the pods teams use. Pods a term our rugby media barely use. They still talk about the game like it is the 80s or 90s.

This YT channel had a good breakdown of Robertson tactics with Brazil and also the Crusaders. The Crusaders, it looked like Mo'unga was key to how the system worked. I was interested if he'd implement the same system with the All Blacks. Would it translate?
Can he coach a different system suited to a different playing group? This is hard to assess if he was doing more man management/culture, and someone else was doing the technical stuff.

As much as we diss the negative Australian League media. Sometimes our local media can be too much the other way. A lot of them seem like the South Park character Captain Hindsight at the moment.

 

[Kestrel84]

Razor did a guest-speaker talk at our business a couple of years ago, prior to taking on the ABs role, during the period where everyone was frothing for him to take over the ABs..

Honestly, I walked away from it extremely underwhelmed and wondering if I was a bad judge of character and I just couldn't "get" his genius. His use of language and ability to articulate his thoughts was really quite basic. Maybe he is awesome and perhaps he just gave zero shits about the talk he was giving, but it certainly did little to inspire anyone that day.

 

[CWC]

This whole saga shows that sports media in NZ, especially lead rugby writer, once a coveted and respected position, is just an eroded pile of nothing*

Fans will do podcasts for free that contain more insight than our print publications can come up with. TV coverage is a whole lot of former players just saying “I don’t know, give it more time”.

Not one decent story about why things weren’t working, why did his assistant quit, why do they keep picking these old washed-up players, presumably they knew some of these things, but were so cowed by the union, wouldn’t say a word about it until very late into last year.

In hindsight it seems obvious that motivating the crusaders through yet another super rugby campaign, when everyone else has their eye on the test season, won’t be relevant at all for the All Blacks job.

But, I bought the appointment, so did a majority of fans who were sick of the way Foster had been handed the job and immediately performances declined.

Seemed like a good time for a break from the henry tapped hansen, hansen tapped foster way things had been run.

People thought we would be getting new players, new tactics, new dawn but they mostly played boring rugby, the forwards were good enough to handle lesser teams (like Australia) but anyone who showed up with a bit of fire in the eyes, the ABs would roll over or muddle across the line unconvincingly.

34 year old beauden barrett limping his way through games while his captain brother is patronised by the ref, none of it turned out the way it was hoped.

* to keep it league related, the warriors shit 2024 year was barely reported on either, how they went from immaculate vibes in 2023 to that, dont recall any investigation at all about why that was, wouldn't want to upset anyone at Mt Smart HQ going forward

Jeff Wilson of Propagandown was funny it was good and workable and immediately after the sacking he was like it’s the right call Marshall’s the only one there who speaks his opinion.

I watch a little bit of Devlin he’s kinda a hybrid of MSM but not having to shill for his bosses these days and he interviewed a few international pundits which was interesting to hear