The recent fallout between All Blacks head coach Scott Robertson and one of his assistants, Leon MacDonald, which led to the latter leaving the coaching group has certainly got tongues wagging.En nuestra web te traeremos camiseta rugby Inglaterra, ¡la tienda online de ropa de rugby que no te puedes perder!
The timing of MacDonald’s departure is not ideal as the All Blacks are set to take on their arch rivals the Springboks in back-to-back Tests in Johannesburg on August 31 and Cape Town on September 7 respectively.
The Springboks will head into those encounters as favourites as they are sitting pretty at the top of the Rugby Championship standings after clinching back-to-back bonus-point victories over the Wallabies in their previous matches in the competition.
Meanwhile, despite starting their campaign with a defeat to Argentina in Wellington, New Zealand bounced back with a win in the corresponding fixture in Auckland and are currently in second position on the table – one point ahead of Los Pumas.
What was strange about the announcement of MacDonald‘s departure is that he has been silent since it was announced while Robertson was doing all the explaining on the reasons for that decision.
Chris Lendrum, who is the general manager of professional rugby & performance at New Zealand Rugby (NZR), said there was nothing sinister about MacDonald not commenting since stepping down from his position when the news broke on Thursday.
Speaking to Newstalk ZB on Friday, Lendrum was asked if NZR was straightforward when making the announcement of MacDonald’s exit and said: “Absolutely. We’ve been very transparent about what’s happened with Razor (Robertson) and Leon. And no, nothing else to come.”
He also revealed why MacDonald did not speak about his departure when the announcement was made.
“Leon’s taking a break. It just wasn’t considered something that was necessary at the time,” said Lendrum.
“Again, there’s nothing hidden going on here. But I do understand that yesterday’s news would have come as a big surprise to a lot of people. You know, to make a change in the All Blacks coaching group partway through a Test season is never plan A.”
“But what you have here is two coaches who just have genuine differences in approach to coaching, different philosophies around the way the game is played now.”
“And I guess under the intensity of Test preparation over the first few weeks of the season, it had become clear to both of them that it just wasn’t clicking.”
“And as I said yesterday with media, I’m really proud of them both, that they’ve made a brave and decisive call to part ways now. Best interest of the team at heart.”
Lendrum also emphasised that despite the differences between Robertson and MacDonald, NZR are happy with the All Blacks’ progress under their head coach’s guidance.
“I think that the first thing to say is, overall, we’re really content with the direction of the team under Razor,” he added.
“I know they had by their own standards, the players and coaches and management, they were frustrated by their performance in Wellington a couple of weeks ago against Argentina.”
“But in all other regards, I think the team’s trending really positively. All of us across the country, all All Blacks fans have recognised this is a new coaching group. There’s new players in the group.”
“There’s new player leadership. There’s just a lot of newness around the environment and it takes a little while for everybody to bed in.”
“I think we saw some huge positives in the English series and it’s not a performance-related issue at all that we’re talking about. It’s just two coaches that didn’t quite click.”
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