{"id":350478,"date":"2025-12-15T23:02:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T23:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/350478\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T23:02:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T23:02:08","slug":"pat-lam-blasts-archaic-process-that-lost-the-all-blacks-tony-brown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/350478\/","title":{"rendered":"Pat Lam blasts ‘archaic’ process that lost the All Blacks Tony Brown"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Pat Lam has put New Zealand<\/a> Rugby on blast for what he describes as \u201carchaic\u201d practices that he believes are holding the All Blacks<\/a> back from returning to the top of the international rugby mountain.<\/p>\n

The former Blues<\/a> and Samoa<\/a> coach, who has been leading Bristol<\/a> Bears since 2017, didn\u2019t hold back in his criticisms of Kiwi administrators, reflecting on his own experience of coming close to an All Blacks gig nearly 20 years ago and suggesting the same flawed process occurred in 2023, when Scott Robertson<\/a> was appointed as All Blacks head coach.<\/p>\n

While All Blacks head coach of the day Ian Foster took issue with the timing of the appointment process, citing it as a distraction during a World Cup year, Lam\u2019s point of contention narrowed in on what he understood to be the process\u2019s premature factional split as it relates to the respective assistant coaching groups. The year 2007 had thrown something similar Lam\u2019s way.<\/p>\n

After enjoying the mentorship of Sir Graham Henry in the early 2000s, Lam\u2019s Auckland<\/a> outfit was thriving in the NPC, and his coaching was recognised in the race for the All Blacks head coach role following the 2007 Rugby World Cup. He told Kiwi radio host Martin Devlin the story on the DSPN platform<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things that was archaic that New Zealand Rugby had, and from what I\u2019ve heard, it still exists; I was part of it in 2007 when Robbie Deans<\/a> rang me out of the blue and asked me if I could go be his assistant coach for the All Blacks. Wow. He needed to put his name into the hat,\u201d Lam recalled.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, I\u2019ve never coached with Robbie Deans. I mean, it\u2019s crazy. He\u2019s going to the All Black job, and he\u2019s asking me. But the reason he was doing it was that New Zealand Rugby wants to know what your coaching team will be before they pick it.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd when Jamie (Joseph) and Razor (Robertson) went for it, they decided Razor is the best coach, but they still made them do the same thing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best attacking coach is Tony Brown<\/a>, 100 per cent. I couldn\u2019t believe it. And naturally, Tony went with Jamie, but Tony\u2019s also good mates with Razor. The New Zealand Rugby Union, what they should have done is chosen who they believe is going to be the best to lead; Razor. Okay, off the back of it, who do you think is the best defence coach? Well, let\u2019s interview and find out. Who\u2019s the best attack coach, from everyone in New Zealand, everyone around the world? Just go methodically through it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the end, Rassie saw it. Bang. Let\u2019s get Tony Brown, put a four-year deal in front of him. And New Zealand Rugby didn\u2019t talk to Tony Brown.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the worst thing that\u2019s happened for New Zealand, the best thing for South Africa. Because I\u2019ve always said this, and I\u2019ve been up here and coached, and know a lot of the South African boys, and they\u2019re impressive men, all they needed was to play a bit more expensive rugby.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the English guys I\u2019ve got here, I talk about 1000 touches a week. We do so much skill work. I asked the owner to build a barn so we can work inside and improve their skills. People are waxing lyrical about our attack game, but you look at the players, we\u2019ve got a lot of rejects. We just upskill them.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I said, if the South Africans ever get upskilled to play a game outside the big bosh, which they\u2019re good at, watch out. And Tony Brown, the Kiwi, All Black, has gone in there, and he\u2019s doing a brilliant job for them. You can just see it, you\u2019re watching them, \u2018That\u2019s Tony Brown\u2019. And you know what he\u2019s teaching them.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew Zealand Rugby missed out on that because of their behaviour. They still believe they are the best in the world, rather than making any changes to some of their behaviours, because I was shocked that it still happens when it happened years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cStart making changes to go, \u2018Right, we\u2019re not the best in the world. We know that. We want to be the best in the world. How do we fix our development? How do we fix their competitions? How do we ensure that the All Black coach has the best possible coaching?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only reason I\u2019m saying this is because everyone\u2019s complaining about it. But why don\u2019t we look at that and not be afraid to make decisions?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe used to complain about the English, and it still happens a little bit up here, that they\u2019re the hardest people to change history; \u2018That\u2019s the way we\u2019ve always done it\u2019. Whereas sometimes I feel, and what I hear, that New Zealand Rugby are still making some of the same decisions that they did many years ago on some things. Of course, we change things, but we\u2019ve got to look at how we make New Zealand the best team, and we\u2019re not happy with second.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut certainly, if they feel that Razor needs a stronger coaching team, well, give him every possible chance to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pat Lam has put New Zealand Rugby on blast for what he describes as \u201carchaic\u201d practices that he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350479,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-350478","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}