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'He'd be a very good chance to be the next head coach': Eddie Jones reveals who he's backing to become next All Blacks boss
By Online Editors
England head coach Eddie Jones has thrown his support behind All Blacks assistant coach Ian Foster to become New Zealand's next head coach.
Foster is seemingly in a two-horse race with Crusaders boss Scott Robertson to become Steve Hansen's successor as head coach of the All Blacks, who stepped down from the position following his side's World Cup semi-final exit in Japan last month.
Foster had been part of Hansen's coaching staff since the latter took over from Sir Graham Henry in 2012, and assisted the All Blacks to their third World Cup title in the United Kingdom four years ago.
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However, his side were out-thought and out-muscled when they faced England in the semi-finals this year, with Hansen's side barely firing a shot as they went down 19-7 to Jones' team at the Yokohama International Stadium.
Nevertheless, Jones believe that Foster's contribution to the All Blacks set-up since first coming into the national side seven years ago warrants serious consideration as the fight to become the next boss of rugby's most successful international team heats up.
"They made the semi-final and got beaten by a better team on the day," the Australian-born 59-year-old told SNTV.
"You look at their record over the years with 'Fozzy' as an assistant coach, it's pretty impressive.
"There's no other team in the world that's won... whether it was 88 percent or 87 percent. No other team in the world wins at that [percentage].
"Although the semi-final was disappointing for them, Ian's done a great job as an assistant coach and I would think he'd be a very good chance to be the next head coach."
Jones also reserved praise for New Zealand-born Glasgow Warriors head coach Dave Rennie, who was recently announced as Michael Cheika's replacement at the Wallabies.
Plenty of onlookers were adamant that Jones should have been made the new Australia boss following the Wallabies' World Cup quarter-final departure after being thumped 40-16 by England in Oita.
Jones coached the Wallabies between 2001 and 2005, but is tied down with England until 2021, making a return to his homeland implausible.
However, he believed Australia have found the right man to take them through to the 2023 World Cup in France.
"Outstanding. He's a very good coach, good man and good rugby man," he said on SNTV.
"Very good tactically, good at bringing people together and I think he'll resurrect Australian rugby."
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Latest Comments
That dilemma has been one of the strongest drives of my ideas, where my hope would be for clubs (and more importanltly their fans) to switch focus and allow the leagues to come up with leagues with better player welfare (ie shorter). I get Finn's ideas but I just don't think they are actually going to work, they are kinda like fake incentives. Rugby as a whole needs to improve for this problem to get resolved.
Nick Bishop has come out with an article where he suggests it is just a South African problem, but I think this earlier reply of mine to Finn is pertinent to your question (and that article) so I'll include it here a well.
This is more of a suggestion for NBs new article on SA but I'd argue more pool games mean its easier to have a structure based on region system where say all of the SA teams that qualified are in the same pool, and you can play all those away games against them consecutively. Then return home and they come to you etc.
I don't think its necessarily needed as I think it would be quite easy for EPCR to take into account/do in conjunction with each leagues fixture list.
(I also go on to say I don't like that pool idea in the perfect world but you can ignore this)
To me, pool play should be sort to just acheive a ranking system. The bottom team of each pool is kicked out or 'culled' (perhaps to Challenge Cup, I'm fond of that exchange), but the fixtures then go into consecutive knockouts of home/away fixtures, say 1 v 16, then go thru to 1 v 8(or worst seed of the other winners etc) home/away, 1v4, etc etc. Maybe the Semi's onwards are 'neutral' fixtures and those last three games are just do or die fixtures?
Go to commentsOh they are undergoing an internal review? Third party?
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