In 2007, after Chris Moller resigned, long-term deputy chief executive Steve Tew was promoted.
When Tew resigned in 2019, he was succeeded by Mark Robinson, who hadn’t been in-house as such but had been groomed for the role by holding a seat on the NZR board and by being a representative on the World Rugby council.
But when Robinson resigned in July 2025, there was no obvious internal candidate ready to replace him. General manager of community rugby Steve Lancaster was interviewed but deemed not ready to handle the full breadth of the role.
Conrad Smith (right) won two Rugby World Cup titles. Photo / Photosport
He was, however, asked to operate as the interim chief executive in November, and six months later, even to his surprise, he was told that he was being given the role permanently.
As recently as March, he was told he would be shifting to a new role as chief rugby officer once a new CEO had been found – only for the board to change its mind in late April and decide that Lancaster was ready to lead the organisation after all.
In essence, the last three CEO appointments NZR has made have been internal promotions. But having suffered – or engineered – a wide-scale executive cleanout last year, there is no heir apparent in the ranks. So too is there a sense that the NZR board has reimagined the CEO role – to one that has less focus and responsibility for financial and commercial initiatives, to one that has a greater connection to rugby at all levels, the geo-politics of the global game, and can operate as an engaging, knowledgeable front-of-house ambassador.
This rescope has come with an elevation of involvement and responsibility for the chief financial officer and chief commercial officer and the organisation’s leadership is now built on these three pillars.
It’s not quite a flat structure, but certainly there is greater collaboration within the executive and shared responsibility for driving and managing strategy.
Cue Conrad Smith. The former All Black was last week appointed to be NZR’s high-performance manager for men’s rugby – in what may be the first step on a journey towards becoming the next chief executive.
When NZR began the search to replace Robinson last year, Smith’s name kept coming up in rugby circles as a possible candidate.
And it’s easy to understand why – he’s university educated with a law degree, an All Blacks great with two World Cup winners’ medals, articulate, intelligent and invested in the community game, having been refereeing in Taranaki for the past few years.
He’s also been working for the International Rugby Players’ Association for the past eight years and took a seat on the board of the Taranaki Rugby Union this year.
The argument against making Smith CEO was that he hasn’t had any big company experience or built yet all the relevant experience he would need to handle the role.
But it’s debatable now whether he needs corporate, financial or commercial experience to be the next chief executive of NZR as the high-performance/rugby route may be the best path to the top job.
Conrad Smith played 94 tests for the All Blacks. Photo / Photosport
“I can honestly say this is not a step I have taken planned towards achieving that,” he says when he’s asked if this is him now on a well-considered path towards succeeding Lancaster when the time comes.
“I was aware of the position [CEO] and I did get asked a lot about the position and I was flattered by that. To me, it was a compliment, but I feel like there are a whole lot of factors that come into that and a role like that requires a huge level of sacrifice.
“That’s not to say that this role doesn’t – but I think anyone can appreciate the difference between this and being CEO.
“I love doing things properly and if I were to take on a role like that [CEO], then I would be wanting to give my all.”
Smith hasn’t set his sights on becoming the next CEO, but it’s a job that interests him. The way he sees it, his new role is the equivalent of winning a contract with the Hurricanes and he wouldn’t dare presume beyond that, but he knows that if he does well, greater rewards are a possibility.
“This suits me as high performance is something I have always had a close affinity with and the chance to do it in New Zealand with NZR is a huge opportunity,” he says.
“Where this leads … who knows? If you ask me straight up, would I ever want to be the CEO of NZR, I would see that as a huge honour.
“I remember the massive impact Jock Hobbs [former NZR chair] had on me and the way I saw him serve New Zealand rugby.
“I had many conversations with him about what I was going to do when I finished playing. I’d love to think of myself in that picture, but right now it is not for me and whether that becomes something who knows.”
The enormity of the job Smith has taken can’t be underestimated. NZR’s high-performance system – its relationship with schools, its transition pathways from First XV to the professional ranks, and its heavy focus on teams in black – is universally considered to be in a mess.
The clean-up job is massive and will be difficult given the non-alignment of stakeholders on what the right solutions are. Provincial unions and Super Rugby clubs believe they are the rightful custodians of the country’s emerging talent and that they should be singularly empowered to identify, recruit and develop elite players.
Then there are questions about the quality of the sevens programme, concerns about the availability of coach education and development opportunities and a defined sense that the larger, provincial unions with a major urban centre, see themselves in competition with Super Rugby clubs.
On top of all that, multiple reports have been commissioned in the past six years – most recently a deep dive into the existing competition structure – that have done nothing but create a culture where the findings of one review lead to the commissioning of another.
After his retirement, Conrad Smith was the high-performance manager and then director of development for the Pau club. Photo / Photosport
It’s a fraught area, tense and divided with vague solutions floating around in long-forgotten, expensive reports.
Smith, it could be said, is the new sheriff in the Wild West and therefore, what qualities does he believe will be the key to success?
“Tact and diplomacy and leadership and credibility,” he says. “I haven’t been on the public speaking circuit for the last five years.
“I have been living in Taranaki. I have been working in rugby, and I have been on the board of Taranaki Rugby Union this year and I have seen for myself the challenge at provincial level.
“I am well aware of the issues around New Zealand and the tension that exists between provincial, Super Rugby and New Zealand Rugby.
“That is a tension that can be healthy but there is no easy answer around this. But there will be a solution somewhere and it will require hard work and good people coming together. I do know what I am getting myself into.”
It’s the mention of the word leadership that will win him immediate support from all sides of the divide.
That’s been the missing piece in high-performance management for too long – and while the various stakeholders all have their aspirations, what they want most is for someone at NZR to take control and lead the way.
Smith, of course, is not the only new appointment in what has been a major restructure. He’ll report to Don Tricker, the former Black Sox coach who will arrive in November as high-performance director – effectively sitting over the top of the All Blacks.
NZR has hired Tricker and Smith and shaken things up precisely because it recognises that it needs to better align its pathways and lift the quality of coaching, conditioning and skills development to which its aspiring and elite players are exposed.
In the past decade, New Zealand has gone backwards as a global rugby force. The under-20 team haven’t won the world title since 2017, the sevens side has been beaten regularly by just about everyone, and the All Blacks’ winning ratio has dropped from around 87% between 2010-2019, to about 72% between 2020-2025.
How, then, would Smith surmise what his job is and what he hopes to achieve? “I think it is about developing players to be world-leading and then selected into teams that do the same,” he says.
“The reason I love high-performance is that I feel as a player I was a product of all that. I was surrounded by good people. I didn’t see myself as a know-all high school superstar. I was lucky enough to land in great environments with great coaching, great support and great cultures and that enabled the best to come out of me.
“I was in teams that did the best they possibly could. I knew in my playing career that sort of stuff doesn’t happen by accident and there is a whole lot of work that goes into creating those cultures and pathways for young players to come in and push the talent that is existing in teams and helping coaches to become world-leading and allowing support staff to add their piece to the whole puzzle.
“I don’t pretend to have the answers right now, but I think I have seen enough around how good environments operate and I think collectively we have the answers within NZ rugby if we put our minds together and get a bit of alignment.”
It is a natural fit for Smith to have taken the role as NZR high-performance manager given his career progression to date.
He left New Zealand after the All Blacks retained the World Cup in 2015 to play in France, and after he retired, he was the high-performance manager and then director of development for the Pau club.
Covid brought him home in 2020, and since then he has been head of operations for IRPA. He says a career in law never appealed, other than financially and that sport is his natural habitat.
“I love sport in general,” he says. “The last five years I have had opportunities to see what work is being done in other sports.
“I am not playing anymore but it gives me a bit of fulfilment seeing boys and girls running around and being active and pursuing their dreams on the sports field.
“I love everything about it so to work in the industry after playing in it makes a whole load of sense and rugby is the game I love.
“I am not a rugby nerd. I don’t watch 10 games a weekend, but I just think there are so many special things about the game – the values it teaches. That’s what draws me back I suppose.”
And while sport is the right field for him, he says, specifically, high-performance is his passion, and the area where he feels he’s developed the relevant skills and experience to make an impact.
“It is an area I have been keen on for a while,” he says. “I started with my French club in high-performance when I was playing. I thought it was something I would enjoy as a challenge and that I had a skillset that was well-suited for.
“When the opportunity came along with NZR – it was a big call and a big challenge, but I was comfortable with the way it has gone and what lies ahead.
“I didn’t know it was being publicised, but I was made aware of it and that was the extent of it and then it was me putting in an application and then a rigorous process.”
What he’s particularly passionate about is ensuring that it remains possible for the current generation to be able to follow the pathway he did to the All Blacks.
Smith was never an age-grade star, and left Francis Douglas Memorial College in New Plymouth to start a law degree in Wellington on no one’s radar.
It was only while he was playing for Old Boys University that he came to prominence, winning promotion to the Wellington team when they suffered a few injuries after already losing Ma’a Nonu and Tana Umaga to the 2003 World Cup.
From being a genuine amateur at the start of 2003, Smith finished the year having played in an NPC final and with a professional contract at the Hurricanes. He never looked back.
The following year he made his All Blacks debut and went on to win two World Cups and 94 caps. But can he see anyone today being able to leave school in total obscurity as he did and become a national sporting icon 10 years later?
“I do think it is possible, and it has to be possible,” he says. “It is probably more challenging now than it was in my time, but I think you could say that about a lot of sports – the way they have tracked towards specialisation and identifying talent at a younger and younger age.
“That can still work. I am not going to come in and suddenly say that this doesn’t work – that it didn’t work for me as a player so we can’t have that. It works and it is done well.
“Academy systems produce great talent but they cannot exclude, and I don’t think any academy would say they do exclude but their behaviour sometimes sort of leans that way. “That is one of the many issues that our game has to deal with – how do you create pathways that allow for talent to come through that at the same time don’t include players who are sitting outside, be it an academy or a development programme.
“I am someone who didn’t come through that system so it is something pretty close to my heart that exclusivity doesn’t become a normal or be created.”
Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand’s most respected rugby writers and columnists. He has won multiple awards for journalism and written several books about sport.