In this modern age of elaborate and often grandiose-sounding job titles, there may not be widespread appreciation of just how significant this new position is, or indeed how influential Tricker – should he be able to agree terms – is going to be in potentially rebuilding New Zealand as the game’s leading and most innovative rugby nation.
Don Tricker worked at New Zealand Rugby between 2010-2018 and could be in line to return. Photo / Photosport
It’s a role that is split into two distinct parts – with one major component being to serve as new All Blacks coach Dave Rennie’s boss, spending large quantities of time observing the national team coaching set-up and providing feedback as required.
This desire to have greater oversight of the All Blacks coaching group is a direct consequence of the findings of the review that led to former head coach Scott Robertson losing his job.
NZR’s board and executive were most likely taken aback not just by the scale of the issues that were unearthed, but the longevity of many of the core problems, which left them with a sense of bewilderment as to why nothing was done earlier to try to remedy the situation.
For the All Blacks to get two years into a coaching reign with major problems undetected is a failure of NZR’s high-performance set-up – both the appointment process and ability to evaluate and amend in real time – hence the decision to restructure and drop a seasoned campaigner into the mechanics of the national team.
New All Blacks coach Dave Rennie could find himself answering to Don Tricker. Photo / Photosport
Tricker was involved in the end-of-season review that led to Robertson’s demise, but far from that generating a conflict of interest, it makes him wise to the team’s immediate history and well-informed about what Rennie needs to fix.
The specific dynamics of how Tricker and Rennie work together will be left up to them to decide, but the former will effectively operate as chief executive of the All Blacks and Black Ferns, to ensure there is better and more accurate information flow between the two national teams and the NZR board and executive.
The other component of the role will be cleaning up a high-performance network that seems riddled with contradictions, exemptions, unwieldy compromises and major holes in its communication.
There are several ongoing cases-in-point that highlight the need for better communication and better management of talent – and the introduction of simpler, less subjective rule applications.
All Blacks star Ardie Savea has been allowed to play club rugby in Japan while contracted to New Zealand Rugby. Photo / Dean Purcell
NZR is currently negotiating a load management plan with Ardie Savea to get him through the next two years – this after signing off on him playing two club seasons in Japan (2024 and 2026).
The country’s best player has been enabled to just about burn himself out by using a sanctioned contractual mechanism – the so-called sabbatical clause – that was designed to elongate the careers of the country’s best players.
Former All Black Shannon Frizell has just followed a similar path to Richie Mo’unga, signing an 18-month contract to return to New Zealand, playing for Tasman and the Highlanders.
It’s a deal – because it is not deemed to be long enough by NZR to earn fast-track eligibility privileges – that keeps him off-limits to the All Blacks for the Greatest Rivalry tour to South Africa.
Richie Mo’unga and Shannon Frizell are in line to return for the All Blacks ahead of next year’s Rugby World Cup. Photo / Photosport
Frizell will only become available to Rennie in October, meaning that the 32-year-old will be sanctioned in doing what the eligibility rules are supposed to block – which is spend three of the four years of this World Cup cycle offshore, and then come home for a late charge at making the 2027 tournament, potentially being selected ahead of a player who has made a long-term commitment to NZR.
To compound the contradictory nature of this – NZR didn’t want Frizell to leave in the first place, with All Blacks forwards coach Jason Ryan saying at the 2023 World Cup that he was blindsided by the flanker’s decision to sign with Toshiba.
There is an ad-hoc feel to how elite careers are managed – a sense that NZR is never ahead of the curve, constantly having to react to non-ideal situations which have partly been of its own making.
If Tricker takes the job, he’ll be the new sheriff in town tasked with cleaning up the Wild West.