Former Test coach slams "self-serving" NZ Rugby

Former test coach Matt Williams has labelled the backlash against All Blacks coach Ian Foster as "shameful", instead pointing the finger at New Zealand Rugby for the decline of the All Blacks and southern hemisphere rugby.

Writing in a column for the Irish Times, Williams, who coached Scotland from 2003-2005, said the reaction from the media and public to the All Blacks' series loss to Ireland "exposed a deep flaw of character".

"This week former New Zealand World Cup-winning coach Steve Hansen harshly criticised New Zealand Rugby for its lack of public support for their team and its under -fire coach Ian Foster, who has suffered far more public criticism and humiliation than any coach should be forced to endure for a sporting defeat," he wrote.

"Not for the first time, the reaction to defeat by the New Zealand media and their wider rugby community has exposed a deep flaw of character. The treatment of Foster by his own community has been nothing short of shameful. As a coach criticism comes with the badge but the personal vilification he has had to endure is simply not acceptable."

But Willliams was a lot more critical about NZ Rugby, accusing the rugby governing body, along with Sanzaar, as being a part of "a long history of destructive Machiavellian political manoeuvring".

"The ramification of the deep distrust between the member unions [in Sanzaar] is now bearing some very bitter and unwanted fruit."

He said NZ Rugby were mainly at fault for South Africa's exit from Super Rugby and potentially the Rugby Championship, and said the club competition was now "fuelled by self-interest, short term and partisan greed" after being the "world's superior rugby club competition" at the beginning of the professional era.

"Over time the confused rugby public simply lost interest and stopped caring as Sanzaar provided a lesson on how to take a highly successful professional sporting competition and smash it into the ground," he wrote.

"The final calamity for Super Rugby occurred last year when the unthinkable happened and the South African franchises headed north into the open arms of the Celts and Italians. This forced the Australians and the Kiwis back into their long and deeply unhappy marriage of mutual distrust.

"The finger pointing toward who caused this great fall in the south, from superiority to inferiority, has the twisted digits attached to arthritic rugby fingers aiming firmly at the chest of New Zealand Rugby.

"The New Zealanders have always believed in their own myth that they and the South Africans are rugby's Jedi Knights and the rest of us just annoying little Ewoks. Yet it would appear that it was the Kiwis whose terms forced the South Africans out of Super Rugby."

He also suggested that the current All Blacks woes and rise of southern hemisphere rugby was fuelled by NZ Rugby's "own self-serving actions".

"After trampling all over Super Rugby, then alienating every national union in the south and possibly forcing the Springboks north, is it any wonder New Zealand Rugby and its team find themselves isolated and boxed into a corner created by their own self-serving actions?

"With such dreadful governance from Sanzaar, it is no accident that the northern nations have recovered so much ground on the south. Not even a victory against the Springboks next weekend will solve all of these deep concerns for New Zealand Rugby and Sanzaar."

This article was first published on nzherald.co.nz and is republished here with permission