{"id":173519,"date":"2025-12-08T10:53:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T10:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/173519\/"},"modified":"2025-12-08T10:53:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T10:53:09","slug":"what-tony-johnson-is-hearing-about-the-vacant-all-blacks-assistant-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/173519\/","title":{"rendered":"What Tony Johnson is hearing about the vacant All Blacks assistant role"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The All Blacks<\/a> are now without two of their assistants from Scott Robertson\u2019s initial coaching staff that was appointed two years ago, with both Leon MacDonald<\/a> and Jason Holland leaving their roles from inside the camp.<\/p>\n

Both are attack coaches, with the most recent departure, Holland, being the team\u2019s strike coach, helping develop ideas and strategies around set plays for this All Blacks team.<\/p>\n

Former Crusaders<\/a> assistant Tamati Ellison was elevated from his skills coach role to help with the team\u2019s defence, while Hansen was helping with the All Blacks attack.<\/p>\n

Now, with the end-of-year review by New Zealand<\/a> Rugby\u2019s High Performance Manager Mike Anthony underway, it is still unknown whether there will be a coach elevated from within, or a specialist attack coach added.<\/p>\n

Experienced commentator Tony Johnson, who commentated three of the four end-of-year Northern Tour games for the All Blacks, explains on\u00a0Sport Nation Mornings\u00a0with Ian Smith<\/a> that he has heard something about what the All Blacks might do with their vacant attacking coach role.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, what I\u2019ve seen and heard is that they want someone to come in with a specialist brief of dealing with how they cope with the high ball. Does that mean that whoever or whatever Jason Holland was doing, and I understand that that was, I wouldn\u2019t say, marginalised, but it was quite a narrow focus that he ended up with, and this is where the whole structure that was set up initially.<\/p>\n

\u201cRemember, it was Scott Robertson<\/a>, overall charge, and then he had five coaches spread out over five different roles, and of course, that changed very dramatically and pretty obviously that Leon McDonald came to the realisation that what he thought he was going to be doing and what he was actually doing weren\u2019t the same thing, so he went.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what the situation is with Jason Holland. I don\u2019t think you step out of a job like that if you\u2019ve been having a really great time and you\u2019re doing everything that you thought you were going to be doing, I would have thought or maybe just felt it wasn\u2019t the right fit. I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 66-year-old broadcaster is unsure whether the team needs someone to be full time coach for the high-ball, because he feels like it may be more important to have someone to develop the All Blacks attack.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really don\u2019t know, but to me that area, yes, they sure enough, they need someone, and they\u2019re dealing with the high ball. But does that have to be a full time coach? Is there not someone who can they can bring in to help develop that skills? I think developing the team\u2019s attack is what they need, probably more than anything else.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause you can see all this tremendous potential there, but whether that comes from outside, because there are limited options available, Tony Brown<\/a>, the guy we all love to see there, he\u2019s been tied up for the foreseeable future, and probably beyond the way things are going.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo does that person exist who can come in and make a difference? Because a lot of very good New Zealand coaches are very well set up overseas in full time jobs. As I say, it sounds to me like they are pitching for someone to come in and help them with that area that\u2019s been such an Achilles heel, how to deal with the high ball, particularly in the face of this new law, which means that all of the advantage really is with the team kicking the ball if they can get it in the right place.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The All Blacks are now without two of their assistants from Scott Robertson\u2019s initial coaching staff that was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101649,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":{"0":"post-173519","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-newzealand","10":"tag-nz","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}