All Blacks coach Dave Rennie says there was a cultural divide between the Wallabies and Rugby Australia before his sacking as Australian coach in 2023, and that he felt sorry for the players while watching a potentially promising Rugby World Cup campaign turn to dust later in the year.
In an exclusive sit-down interview with the Herald, Rennie spoke for the first time about his tenure as Wallabies coach – and brutal exit – having kept a dignified silence since being blindsided by RA’s contentious decision to replace him with Eddie Jones almost four years ago.
The 62-year-old coached the Wallabies in 34 Tests between 2020 and early 2023. After a three-season stint in Japan following his departure from the Wallabies, Rennie was appointed as All Blacks coach earlier this year.
Rennie coached New Zealand to a win over his old side last weekend in Auckland, and will lead them on Australian soil for the first time on Saturday in the second Bledisloe Cup clash in Sydney. Having tried and failed with the Wallabies, Rennie finally got his hands on the silver trophy last weekend.
“Once all the boys had a swig out of it, all us old fellas did, too,” Rennie said.
“There were a few photos taken, and we even took it back to the hotel and lots of the families got photos with it. It was pretty cool.”
Last days in gold
The end of the road for Rennie with the Wallabies came after a season of mixed results in which they lost a majority of games but also beat England, Argentina and South Africa, and were moments away from beating New Zealand in Melbourne before being penalised, bizarrely, for time-wasting in the final minute, and losing 39-37.
The Wallabies then beat Scotland and Wales on their spring tour, and narrowly lost to leading sides France and Ireland.
“No one was beating either of those teams at their home ground at that time, and we should have beaten both of them,” Rennie recalls. “But we also lost to Italy, of course.”
Rennie opted to make major changes for the Italy clash, resting 12 starters, and the Wallabies were upset in Florence, 28-27. Then-RA chairman Hamish McLennan, who was at the game, was furious.
“I have no regrets around what we did for that,” Rennie said. “The original plan was we were supposed to have three games on that tour, and we ended up having five. So we were book-ending with a couple of games that were going to make a lot of money.
“You do it because it’s good for the game here financially. But it needed to come with some understanding that we can’t put our top team out five weeks in a row.
“My concern was we’d limp into Dublin and get absolutely pumped a year out from a World Cup. So the idea was back the squad. We had a good team on the field, and were good enough to win. We just didn’t play well enough.”
Rennie said he still feels the Italy strategy “was the right thing to do”, and the team were unlucky to lose to Ireland a week later. Future superstar Mark Nawaqanitawase then scored twice in a last-up win over Wales.
“We left Europe knowing that we’ve got a lot of injured players to come back in the mix in ’23, and we had a pretty positive frame of mind,” he said. “We had a camp at the start of January, and we had a pretty clear direction, and the boys were in a really positive frame of mind. Until about two days later, when things changed.”
The Wallabies exit
An independent review of the Wallabies’ 5-9 season had been conducted at the end of 2022, and it concluded Rennie still had the support of dressing room.
But behind the scenes, Jones had been lined up as his replacement, and the RA board made the call to part ways with Rennie.
On a Sunday night, Rennie was asked to attend the RA offices the next day to speak with then CEO Andy Marinos, who was in South Africa, on a video call. Due to attend Waratahs training at 7am, Rennie asked for the meeting to be held at 6.30am. Then-RA director and now chief executive Phil Waugh also attended.
Rennie was given the news. A few hours later, so was the world. Prepared videos about Jones’ homecoming were rolled out on RA social media channels by lunchtime.
Rennie flew back to his Gold Coast home and issued a brief statement through RA a few days later, thanking people for their support and, significantly, pointing out he maintained the support of players and staff.
Despite many requests, Rennie did not then speak publicly about his Wallabies experience for several years afterwards. He gave some short answers in press conferences when appointed as All Blacks coach earlier this year, but brushed off questions about his Wallabies sacking again in Auckland last week, maintaining, “It’s not about me”.
Sitting in the All Blacks’ Double Bay hotel this week, Rennie again emphasised there was no special motivation to beat the Wallabies given his personal history, and that he maintained many strong friendships in Australian rugby.
‘Didn’t share the same values’
Asked what he had learned from his time as Wallabies coach, however, Rennie pointed to what he felt was a roadblock.
“There was probably a disconnect between the Wallabies and Rugby Australia, in the direction we were trying to head,” Rennie said. “I thought, culturall,y we were different. From a Wallaby point of view, we had a lot of good people, the connection was strong.
“But some of the values that were important to us as Wallabies wasn’t so important from a Rugby Australia point of view. And if there’s no alignment there, it’s difficult for everyone to pull in the same direction.”
Rennie declined to specify individuals to whom he was referring, or whether he was referencing McLennan’s infamous quote that he’d prefer to have “somebody who’s really tough and we win World Cups, than have a Kumbaya session, everyone holds hands and we fail.”
It was perceived as a dig at Rennie, who’d used music and singing to strengthen the bonds of the different cultural groups in the Wallabies dressing room, which had become strained during the Israel Folau affair.
Rennie said that in a broader sense, he “struggled to manage up here”.
“It’s an area I’ve been really good at wherever I’ve been. But I found it really difficult here. And so that probably led to the situation at the end,” Rennie said. “But, again, that’s a little bit to do with the lack of alignment, too. We didn’t necessarily share the same values.
“Messaging was often confusing. You know, the chairman will be saying, ‘Oh, we don’t need New Zealand, we’re going to go alone’. I’ve already been saying in the media that New Zealand needs us, and we need New Zealand, with South Africa gone.
“So the chairman’s messaging is hard for me to back up, because otherwise I’m contradicting myself. That was just one example.”
Watching the World Cup
Rennie stayed in touch with many of the Wallabies staff and players, and felt for them as the 2023 season ended in bitter disappointment when they failed to qualify for the World Cup knockout stage.
He declined to offer a view on Jones’s tenure but highlighted the lack of experienced players in the squad as a key factor in their struggles. Jones jettisoned numerous senior players of the Rennie era including captain Michael Hooper and playmaker Quade Cooper.
Jones’s squad was the least experienced Wallabies group ever sent to a World Cup.
“I felt like there was probably 12 or 13 guys I would have taken to a World Cup but didn’t go,” Rennie said. “It’s just a massive number. So I felt for those guys because they should have been there. And a lot of them were experienced players who I think would have made a massive difference.
“If we’d taken a similar squad to the World Cup [as used in 2022], we would have been in a pretty good pool and had a good opportunity. I just think the lack of experience really shone out in the end.”
‘The lack of experience really shone out in the end.’
Dave Rennie on the Wallabies at the 2023 Rugby World Cup
The future of Australian rugby
Rennie said he was hugely invested in the success of Australian rugby, and laughed when reminded of his blow-up in 2021 when New Zealand backed out of a mid-COVID deal to play in Perth, after the Wallabies had played twice in Auckland, and had quarantined for two weeks in Wellington a year earlier. The Wallabies, waiting in Perth, learned of the All Blacks’ about-face via social media.
“I’m bloody angry”, Rennie said at the time. “It tells you more about them than us, I’d say.”
Rennie said he was all-in when fighting from the gold corner.
“I was proud to sing the national anthem and commit to our boys,” he said. “Like I’ve said before, I’ve got no regrets. I loved my time here and got to work with a lot of great people, so a lot of good memories.
“I have a good relationship with a lot of people here and I treasure that because coaching the Chiefs, you coach against guys like Slips and Whitey and Hoops and Allan and all those guys in there, you don’t really know them.
“But they’re bloody good men, salt of the earth. From that point of view, it was awesome. I feel blessed that I got an opportunity to work with them.
“I felt for them. I could see they were hurting on the weekend. I chatted with a lot of the boys on the field. They came with high hopes, and started well. But we won a lot of big moments on the weekend, and when we were good, we were able to apply pressure for long periods and got rewarded.”
Asked about what insights he’d gained during his time on either side of the Tasman fence, Rennie said he had come to understand how genuinely desperate the All Blacks are to win the Bledisloe Cup every year; and that while Australia is a crowded sporting market, the Wallabies can still be a global force.
“It gives you an understanding of how competitive the landscape is for the athlete, with NRL and AFL,” Rennie said.
“But you’re still 26 million or whatever it is here, there’s still a lot of rugby players and a lot of good rugby players, and so I think with long-term ability to understand and connect and keep a hold of a lot of those good kids coming through, and with a massive emphasis around development and investment, there’s no reason why Wallabies can’t be competitive and among the best in the world.”
All Black return and Anzac Day Bledisloe
It’s often forgotten that the All Blacks were keen to get Rennie on staff in 2019, after he’d made a commitment to join the Wallabies. He kept his word, and assumed it would be his last shot at coaching the famous Kiwi side.
“I figured if you coach the Wallabies that’s probably not going to happen,” he said. “Obviously, I left here and I went to Japan. But I’d done three years at Kobe and I was keen to come back home. Technically I’d been away nine years.
“So I was just keen to get home to the kids and grandkids and then obviously this came up. It certainly wasn’t planned. My mindset was that it would never happen.”
But after the NZR made a shock call to remove Scott Robertson in January, Rennie beat Jamie Joseph for the job, and his Wallabies experience was a big factor. So too, some references from ex-Wallabies players.
One of the first things that Rennie made a call on was throwing his support behind the concept of an Anzac Day Bledisloe Cup clash. The RA-proposed concept, to be played in the middle of Super Rugby season, had been knocked over by the NZR previously.
“When they asked me, I just saw it as positives, really,” Rennie said.
“I think playing a test on ANZAC Day is such a great concept, when the league have done it in the past. Obviously, there’s big AFL and NRL games on those weekends and so on.
“But we also get a chance to gather our players together and prepare for a game. What normally happens is you might get guys in [for a mid-year camp] on a Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and then they’ve got to go back to their clubs. And so you can’t really do anything structurally because there’d be too much confusion and so on.
“So it’s a chance for us to get a group of guys in and train for a week and a half in preparation for that at a World Cup year. It’d be good for us, and the players will definitely bar up for it.
“There’d be massive interest here, which would be great for the game.”
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