Hunt for the WILDER PEOPLE
1: How much value should be placed on continuity?
Buzz words are readily adopted these days and often not challenged hard enough. The term continuity has been used to describe Steve Hansen’s elevation from assistant to head coach in 2012 and is again being trotted out to explain the value of potentially promoting current assistant Ian Foster.
But in what sense are we using the word continuity? It would be wrong to believe that selecting Foster would be simply giving the All Blacks another period of what they had under Hansen.
Foster is not Hansen and would bring a different style and new ideas. They are different people with different methods so the continuity aspect applies only in the sense that Foster has significant knowledge of how the All Blacks currently operate, strengths and weaknesses of the various players and knowledge of what sort of pressure he will be under if he gets the job.
Continuity therefore has significant value because Foster would be able to make informed, educated plans as soon as he came into the job.
2: Is Ian Foster genuine head coach material?
It’s not strictly possible to make a definitive call on this. It is, however, possible to say that he shouldn’t be judged by his record at the Chiefs.
The nature of
