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Ian Foster went into the Ellis Park changing rooms by himself and cried.
Senior All Blacks such as Beauden Barrett, Ardie Savea and Aaron Smith decided on the team bus to go straight from the test to New Zealand Rugby chief executive Mark Robinson’s Johannesburg hotel room to fight for their coach’s job.
The extraordinary aftermath of the All Blacks’ win against the Springboks in South Africa last year, with Foster’s job on the line, has been revealed in a new documentary about the 2022 season.
Part of the NZR+ launch – New Zealand Rugby’s new fan engagement platform – the 27-minute documentary called All Blacks: In Their Own Words: Loyalty features interviews with Foster, Savea, Sam Cane, Smith, Richie Mo’unga and others – with a surprising degree of candour at times.
The segment on the Ellis Park test is particularly fraught with emotion.
After the 2-1 series loss to Ireland, and a loss to the Springboks in Mbombela, Foster went into the Ellis Park test under immense pressure, with everyone expecting him to be sacked if the All Blacks lost.
“We knew in the back of our minds that if we lost this game that it was highly likely that ‘Foz’ was going to lose his job,” Cane said.
“We were playing for our coach’s job,” Smith said.
Foster said: “I felt very much at peace in the game. I was probably geared up with that being my last test, so I was determined to enjoy it.”
What followed at Ellis Park was a famous All Blacks win, sealed in a dramatic final quarter, and the unusual sight of Cane crying on the field afterwards.
Cane’s tears weren’t the only ones. Foster, emotionally spent, is shown in the documentary heading towards the changing rooms post-game.
“I kind of felt, ‘OK, not a bad way to go’,” Foster said. “I actually went back to the shed and just sat there by myself, and had a few tears.”
NZR
Beauden Barrett discusses the All Blacks’ turbulent 2022 in a NZR All Blacks documentary.
That wasn’t the end of the day’s drama, with Barrett, Smith and Savea part of a player delegation that went to see Robinson at the team hotel after the test.
There, they took turns in explaining to Robinson how they rated Foster as a coach.
”Big dog [Robinson] took the feedback,” Savea said. “Yeah, you can get people’s opinions but you look at his fruit and his fruit is us, the players, and we’re the ones that are saying he’s a great coach.”
The documentary also covers the series loss to Ireland, although it glosses over the sackings of coaches John Plumtree and Brad Mooar.
It also has moments of levity, with Dane Coles ruefully remembering one particular exchange with the public during the Ireland series.
“I picked up my son from day care and even the day care teacher was ripping into me,“ Coles said. “I couldn’t escape it.”
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