There are a whole load of junk theories about anyone being able to successfully coach teams that are laden with indisputably good players.
The reality is undeniable that success comes from teams having the right environments and that the likes of Dan Carter and Richie McCaw owe their career success as much to the coaching they received as the talent with which they were blessed.
Players all say that coaching is a differentiator – a tangible rather than intangible asset that heavily impacts their skill-set growth, but more importantly, it has a major influence on their career planning.
Everyone thinks the players follow the money, but that’s only partly true.
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Japan’s Top League is proving a magnet for global talent because it is not only paying good money, but it is loaded with coaching heavyweights such as Steve Hansen, Ian Foster, Dave Rennie, Todd Blackadder, and Robbie Deans, as well as highly respected South Africans Frans Ludeke and Johan Ackermann.
New Zealand’s Super Rugby coaching line-up doesn’t lack frontline star power as Vern Cotter and Jamie Joseph are universally respected leaders with international experience, Clayton McMillan is an emerging star, and Clark Laidlaw has started his Hurricanes’ tenure impressively.
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But it is questionable whether it has the requisite depth across its five Super Rugby clubs, a factor that became apparent when the Blues, Crusaders and Hurricanes all had to find new head coaches in 2024, and none were able to promote from within.
The news that McMillan will leave the Chiefs at the end of this Super Rugby campaign — a year early on his contract — to take over as head of Munster, is going to again test New Zealand’s depth.
It highlights the need for the national body to look at ways it can work with clubs to retain and build its coaching capability to better withstand the stream of departures.
Current Chiefs assistant Ross Filipo will be a strong internal candidate to take over, but there is no doubt that McMillan’s departure is a titanic loss, both in the intellectual capital it will deny New Zealand and the value it will deliver Ireland.
McMillan has grafted his way from provincial rugby to the Chiefs, enjoying side hustles with the Māori All Blacks and All Blacks XV. Now, just as he’s got his Super Rugby team playing sensationally well and demonstrating that he’s somewhere near the peak of his craft, he’s taking off to Ireland.
This epitomises the core of the problem New Zealand faces, which is that it doesn’t have the structure, financial means or clarity of pathway to keep its best coaches once they have made a name for themselves.
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McMillan hasn’t outgrown Super Rugby as such, but after five years at the helm, he’s obviously been contemplating his next move and can’t see a way forward in New Zealand where Scott Robertson is locked into the All Blacks job until at least the end of 2027.
It’s easy to argue that this is a simple consequence of the pyramidal structure, where New Zealand’s base has 14 NPC teams, five Super Rugby teams, and just one international team, and therefore it is inevitable that quality coaches like McMillan get squeezed out of the system when there is a long-term occupant in the All Blacks’ job.
But there are counter arguments to this, and questions to ask about whether McMillan would have stayed if he had certainty about how and when NZR would conduct the process to determine who will coach the All Blacks after the 2027 World Cup?
And then there is the whole issue of whether ambitious coaches in New Zealand feel that they have to put an overseas stint on their CV to become serious candidates for the All Blacks role.
The tone of the press release announcing McMillan’s departure suggested that NZR, while sad to lose him, is of the view that Munster will provide a sort of finishing school experience — and that an overseas sojourn is an expected and in-built part of the coaching pathway.
But there is so much inconsistency in this because neither Robertson, nor his predecessor Foster, coached overseas before landing the All Blacks job, while the likes of Hansen, Graham Henry, Wayne Smith, and John Mitchell all did.
Then there is the question of money, not so much in relation to what a head coach can earn, but whether there is enough collective investment in coaching full stop.
Has the total expenditure on Super Rugby coaching teams stayed in line with market trends to attract and retain the right calibre of people — a question that is yet more pertinent when considering that the likes of Joe Schmidt, Tony Brown, and Pat Lam are also not in the New Zealand system.
Intellectual capital is pouring out of the country, carried in the heads and iPads of strategic masterminds.
There is probably some algebraic formula that needs to be created that shows that losing one coach of McMillan’s calibre is the equivalent of losing five Richie Mo’unga’s.
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