New All Blacks assistant coach Neil Barnes says he\u2019s both humbled and driven by the challenge ahead after joining Dave Rennie\u2019s coaching group.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a huge honour to be involved at something at this level, I\u2019m pretty humbled by the whole thing,\u201d Barnes told Sport Nation’s Millsy & Guy.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut mate, I\u2019m not devoid of understanding the level of pressure that\u2019s going to come on in this and the amount of responsibility involved, but that also excites me to be at my best.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barnes, who links up with Jason Ryan, Tana Umaga, Mike Blair and Phil Healey, admits the role wasn\u2019t something he always chased.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis might be an interesting answer for you, but I\u2019m actually a farmer and I love farming. I actually just did rugby as recreation, I got a buzz out of helping teams achieve and especially the individuals inside it, watching them get better and shift to another level, that\u2019s what drives me.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that people ask you to come and do these jobs in other teams is just like bit of a win. But yeah, mate, I\u2019m not gonna ever deny like being able to get into an all black team. it\u2019s something that sits pretty highly with me but it\u2019s not something I ran around aspiring to do the whole time. I just try and do my best to help people out.\u201d<\/p>\n
That farming background, he says, underpins how he coaches.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s my comfortable place (the farm). You deliver results by the work you put into it in farming and you soon work out that there\u2019s not much of a crop to harvest if you don\u2019t sow the seeds and then nurture it all the way through and that applies from the rugby as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t have to be on the farm. I choose to be every morning at half past six to go over and help and clean up. But then I head into town to do rugby to try and help out with coach development and player development at grassroots level. And I honestly believe that\u2019s given me a great base to move to this level, to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tony Johnson on new All Black assistant Neil Barnes | Sport Nation Mornings<\/p>\n
Barnes says improvement across the board is the focus for the All Blacks.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight across the board. We\u2019ll put a lot of work into the skill increment of the team to grow the players, and if you grow the individual player, you\u2019ll actually grow a team.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I think the whole team has to be aligned about how you\u2019re playing and understand the reason why. You get all that right and give them some buy-in to what it should look like, they\u2019ll go to war for you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barnes also revealed he initially encouraged Rennie to apply for the top job – and having worked with him before, Barnes believes the All Blacks head coach will bring a refreshing edge.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is unbelievably honest, caring and driven. All of those qualities when you put them together, he\u2019ll get the best out of people.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019ll be refreshing for this country at the end of the day\u2026 he can also be pretty brutal when he needs to when it comes to the honesty side of things within the team. A deep person that cares.\u201d<\/p>\n
Listen to the full interview:<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New All Blacks assistant coach Neil Barnes says he\u2019s both humbled and driven by the challenge ahead after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560436,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-560435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560435","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=560435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}