Ex-All Black coach Steve Hansen's verdict on Richie Mo'unga's new deal

Given that Hansen botched Mo'unga's entry into test rugby, you have to wonder why he's still talking about him, and why others are still listening.

In August 2018, after Hansen finally picked Mo'unga in the full AB squad he publicly undermined him by dismissing his achievements with the Crusaders as the product of sitting behind "A Rolls Royce pack", a line Robertson repeated sarcastically a week later when making his own assessment of Mo'unga's achievement in driving the Crusaders to back to back SR's after a decade of nothing.

Hansen then did his level best to ignore him in 2018. He tried his golden boy Beauden Barrett, and failed, tried McKenzie, and failed. Unable to even pretend either was up to running the AB's at the top level, in world cup year 2019 Hansen dumped Mo'unga in the end deep and made him the AB starting 10 with next to no lead in.

Not satisfied with grossly mismanaging the entry of a player in the most important position in the AB team, in conjunction with Ian Foster he came up with the disastrous dual playmaker system, a tactic that undermined Mo'unga on the field in the same way Hansen had undermined him off the field. And to complete the job, Hansen then made sure his mate Ian Foster, the worst AB's coach in the professional era, got the job between 2020 and 2023, perpetuating that failed system.

Hansen's mistreatment of Mo'unga is the primary piece of evidence in assessing his steep decline as AB's coach after 2016. Why would anyone take seriously a man who stopped understanding the top end of test rugby a decade ago? He has now become the NZ version of Jake White, a once great, RWC winning coach who reveals his irrelevance every time he opens his mouth.

It does feel like this was the missing piece in Razor’s RWC squad and has covered his only area of weakness.

They have a great starting pack, he’s still finding the best balance in the back row but has all the players he needs to succeed and this was the player he needed to give more options at 10 & 15, which he now has.

It’s been a slow build under Razor but feels like things are coming together at the right time.

I loved Steve Hansen’s descriptions, BB playing very well and D-Mac playing well . . . so Steve H still confirms BB would be his starting 10. . . and it’s on RM to prove he is at that level when he returns.

I can’t remember Jerome as standing out for coming back any different, so that’s obviously a good thing, but Beauden returns last year last year definitely stood as the first time I felt someone was ready for test football immediately upon returning.

TBH though Jerome is a special individual, I could believe he’s one for instance that could come back and do a job immediately after injury etc, Nonu, another, who could go all around the world and pull out his A game every time.

Test rugby is not a big step up from Super Rugby though, that’s the issue. In JRLO a player in Mo’unga’s position only needs to play as well as he needs to to get his team over the line. In Super, you are going to be getting regular test match level games, where you’re asked to pull out more to win. Admittedly that’s less so the case for Richie, as not all the teams are at the required standard, and he’s joining the best one, so perhaps harder for him to get upto international level. Of course it took him many years to get his head around the difference, despite winning title after title. We’ve just seen the same with Reihana and Havili, struggling to perform to the same high levels outside the Crusader environment.

We’ll have to wait and see what the itinerary is next year. October is a very particular and arbitrary date to have given. It’s not aligned with NPC, you wouldn’t think it’s aligned with Japanese rugby, it’s nothing weve seen in the past. If it was used just to show he’s eligible before the November series, where often extra games proceed, why be so specific when it could be that injury or something prevents him from qualifying in August in the first place?

We know there are still going to be a couple of Bledisloe games, a fourth test outside outside South Africa, and another game in Chicago against the Irish, which we know is the first of November. We don’t know what’s happening with the Rugby Championship, and whether the one off game against SA is part of a mini RC, which would mean another test against Argentina. Could all this be played before the tour to SA, and ‘October’ would be a period where Richie would run the midweek team during the test series? Will it just be these games off the back of the tour that warranted such a specific return date? All very interesting and a mammoth year to return in.