NZR board duck their responsibility

There are a lot of difficult things to sort out in sport, complex issues without complete solutions.

But choosing an All Blacks coach? Come on. That’s a relatively easy decision, and one the NZR board should feel it is more than competent to make rather than relying on a panel.

The way NZR is searching for the new coach is baffling on the surface. Before they unveiled the masterplan, who remotely considered there might be 26 candidates, and that the board would hand the decisionmaking process over to a separate body?

We all know the candidates. We all know their records. We all know how their teams play. Or we should do. So where has the NZR board been?

NZR is obsessed with the All Blacks. A lot of people would argue the All Blacks are all they have cared about for the past decade or so.

And yet when it comes to appointing a new All Blacks coach, they hand it over to former coach Sir Graham Henry.

Now I know that’s not the official position, because Henry is only one of five members of a committee — including NZR chairman Brent Impey and chief executive Mark Robinson — who will decide the new coach.

But the Graham Henry most of us know is no shrinking violet. When it comes to the coalface of trying to win a Rugby World Cup, he is extremely overqualified, the rest of this committee mere tea makers in comparison.

Sir Graham has an alpha personality. He’s a former head coach of two countries and a former headmaster. He’s not your assistant type. By my reckoning, he is going to dominate this discussion, and rightly so given the panel’s make-up.

Who, in this particular debate behind closed doors, will stand up to such a giant of the game in a country where famous All Blacks characters retain a mythical status which others

The NZR board members should be using their own judgements, and standing or falling by those.

find intimidating? It’s not the way this should be happening.

The NZR board members should be using their own judgements, and standing or falling by those. What happens if the coach stuffs up? Get the committee back together? Get another committee together?

The board could have talked individually or collectively to whoever they liked here and overseas — Henry, Wayne Smith, Richie McCaw, Portia Woodman, Ian McGeechan — before going away and making the big call.

The NZR board includes Michael Jones and Farah Palmer, who have both won World Cups. The full board should see it as an exciting moment for All Blacks rugby, something they are desperate to drive and control, and something they want to be seen as doing.

As for coming up with 26 contenders . . . there aren’t 26 contenders for head coach, and the genuine ones like Scott Robertson and Jamie Joseph might even be offended that they’ve been chucked in such a large mix.

The way the search for a new All Blacks coach is being conducted makes it appear no stone is being left unturned while those who should be totally responsible can hide behind the process. What next — a national referendum?