On the coaching side, the All Blacks have had a policy of promoting from within.
Steve Hansen and Ian Foster – Robertson’s two immediate predecessors – both stepped into the All Blacks head coach role after serving as assistants.
Robertson, who previously worked as the ‘Baby Blacks’ under-20s coach before a hugely successful spell with the Canterbury-based Crusaders, was a relative outsider, despite having no significant coaching experience outside of New Zealand.
No foreign coach has ever held the role.
For a long time, that insularity protected winning intellectual property.
Now, next to South Africa’s innovative and cosmopolitan set-up, it seems to be slowing them down.
There is a wider challenge as well.
New Zealand’s rugby authorities, like other countries, are battling against a decline in boys playing the game., external
The mystique of the All Blacks has also been dented by the need to leverage it for revenue.
In 2022, US private equity firm Silver Lake bought a stake in the All Blacks in a controversial deal.
Last year, there was a very public dispute with Ineos, the petro-chemical firm owned by Sir Jim Ratcliffe, over defaults on a sponsorship agreement.
Lucrative matches in emerging markets have become a regular feature of the team’s itinerary, raising funds, but not generating enthusiasm or passion back home.
Off-the-field incidents involving a number, external of , externalplayers, external who subsequently remained on the team, has also tested belief in the All Blacks’ famed policy of not tolerating poor behaviour.
The pipeline of talent, once so certain, has spluttered.
New Zealand won the first under-20 World Cup in 2008, and the following three editions.
But they have reached the final only once in the past five stagings of the tournament, losing to South Africa in Italy last year.
The National Rugby League, Australia’s powerhouse domestic rugby league competition, will reportedly stage one of the games in its showpiece State of Origin series in New Zealand for the first time in 2027, and hopes to launch a second franchise in the country by 2029.
As it is expands and scouts promising rugby prospects, the All Black talent pool shrinks further.
There is always the possibility of another golden generation.
The current one, with talents like Cam Roigard, Wallace Sititi and Will Jordan, is pretty precious.
But whoever takes over from Robertson faces the difficult task of uniting a squad of players for the Rugby World Cup only 20 months away, and overcoming deeper structural issues.
A four-Test series away to world champions South Africa is at the heart of a testing 2026 schedule and will be brutal barometer of where the team, and a rugby nation, stand.
