All Black rugby great Sean Fitzpatrick: “We need SA rugby to be strong”

David O’Sullivan

Sean Fitzpatrick is one of the great New Zealand rugby players. He played 92 Test matches, and a significant portion of his career is linked to South Africa. He got his international break after a number of key All Blacks were suspended for having taken part in the rebel Cavaliers tour to South Africa when he was drafted into a depleted national team in 1986. He was a member of the team that won the inaugural World Cup in 1987. He captained the All Blacks in South Africa’s first Test match back after isolation, he was again at the helm in the 1995 World Cup final at Ellis Park (need I remind you what happened?), and he captained the All Blacks to their first-ever series victory on South African soil in 1996. He is a self-professed fan of South Africa, its people and its rugby. Fitzpatrick is now the chairman of the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation, and was recently in the Caribbean supporting a Laureus programme in Grenada. I had a chance to catch up with him on the phone from London to find out a little more about his Laureus duties and to get his views on the current state of All Black and Springbok rugby.- David O’Sullivan

Good to chat to you Sean. How are settling into your job as chairman of the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation?

Well I’ve just got back from Grenada, it was 33 degrees when I left and I have just landed in London where it was -4. So it was a little bit chilly. We were in 35 countries, and now it’s 36 countries globally with Laureus and we support about 130 projects, and this is our first time we are supporting a foundation in the Caribbean and Grenada, along with the Jason Roberts Foundation and this particular project is working with boys and girls that are disadvantaged and helping them through football really. Some of the boys went to the Homeless World Cup – I don’t know if you know about that?

Sean Fitzpatrick. Image courtesy of Twitter @TheTutorsAssoc

No, I don’t know about that…

It was phenomenal. As you know in South Africa with our project there was Morné du Plessis and John Robbie and Co – they do wonderful things. They change children’s lives and Jason Roberts who used to be a premiership footballer has had a foundation for a while and he retired about three years ago. This is the first time he has had a project and Grenada is where he is from.

How big a deal is football in that part of the world, Sean?

It is probably the number one sport there but they have not been doing that well lately and they just need a bit of structure and Jason is hoping to help with that and we had Prince Harry there on Monday. He came to Grenada, he’s been in the Caribbean for a couple of weeks actually and Monday we had him with us launching our project with the Jason Roberts Foundation.

I am sure he attracts a fair amount of attention wherever he goes. Is this part of Laureus as well or was he there for another initiative, Sean?

No, he is just on a tour of the Caribbean at the moment and it just worked out perfectly. As you say he is a huge name and we got a lot of mileage off the back of having Harry there. He’s a wonderful, wonderful ambassador in terms of promoting all things that we do.

Richie McCaw with the Webb Ellis Cup.

Now you are dealing with football, is there ever a moment when you decide to do a William Webb Ellis and tell the kids that you can actually pick this thing up and run with it?

(Laughs) They don’t actually know much about rugby in Grenada, but I tell you what – there are some real athletes there. I would love to get a hold of a few of them and do some rugby training. But what we are really doing is encouraging children to play sport and get active.

If I could turn our attention to look at rugby and the way in which world rugby has unfolded this past year. We had the All Blacks getting that unbeaten record once again and then that surprise loss to Ireland. Critics are suggesting, and I don’t know if this is just media hype or if it is also the way players think, but they are saying that this is the greatest of All Blacks teams. I would have thought that the 1996 team that won a series in South Africa (under Fitzpatrick’s captaincy) was a pretty decent team. What are your thoughts?

They were a special team in 1996, but they were also a pretty special team in 1995. But it certainly grew in 1996 and I think it is one of my greatest memories – that tour of 1996. It’s hard to compare generations but I would think this current All Black team and the type of rugby that they have played through 2016 has been quite phenomenal. When I think about the number of test players they lost last year, I think they lost about 850 test caps – Richie McCaw, Dan Carter – and most of the players that retired last year, and not to be affected by that says a lot about the coaches and the current team under Kieran Reid. So I would have said before they played Ireland in Chicago that I just couldn’t see a team beating them currently. They played that well in the Championship, Bledisloe Cup and against Wales in the summer and for Ireland to beat them. You know people were saying in the northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere, it was literally the All Blacks versus the rest actually and for Ireland to do what they did. And you know if you think about it, it shouldn’t have been a surprise. They should have beaten the All Blacks in 2013 at Lansdowne Road, at the Aviva stadium and they didn’t, but they beat them comprehensively in Chicago. To score five tries and 40 points against an All Black team that had been totally dominant says a lot about the Irish and particularly about the coach and that’s what I think at the moment. The best teams in the world at the moment are Ireland, England and the All Blacks with the best coaches in my estimate. The Irish and Joe Schmidt (the Ireland coach) did a job on the All Blacks in Chicago and two weeks later, after the All Blacks played Italy, then they came to Dublin and once again it was a battle of the coaches. (All Blacks coach) Steve Hanson got one back there. It was a great match.

Australia’s Wallabies v New Zealand All Blacks – Olympic Stadium, Sydney, Australia. REUTERS/Jason Reed

Do you think it’s important that there are other teams which are able to stand up to the might of the All Blacks, that it is not always just going to be a predictable situation in which the All Blacks will win, that there is – I can’t call it a vulnerability? It’s more possibly a side that is able to rise to the challenge of All Black rugby that surely is good for world rugby so that there is not this continual dominance by the All Blacks.

Yes, certainly without question. I was starting to get a bit concerned even as an All Blacks fan that we were so dominant, particularly during the Championship. We’ve got the Lions coming to New Zealand next year and everyone was concerned that it would be full of Englishmen and that they would struggle in this ten match tour and even whether they could win a Test match let alone the provincial or the Super Rugby games. But I think that what the Irish showed, and we have now got 23 Irishmen who know that they can beat the All Blacks, has given everybody a bit of heart. And I think it has shown that the All Blacks game is not very complicated, they have a simple game plan, but it’s played executing the game plan well and working very hard on the training field. If you have players who are intelligent enough to be able to load information and then to be able to train hard, to be able to perfect their basic skills, you can beat anyone. And I think that is one of the clear messages to World Rugby really. This is the standard you need to get to, but as players and as coaches, you’ve got to work hard.

If I could just turn our attention Springbok rugby, and obviously here in South Africa we are in the doldrums regarding the state of our rugby game when you look at the way we are playing. Have you got any solutions as to how we can take the game forward and become competitive again, Sean?

I think the key thing that the All Blacks have shown is that working in cycles, in terms of World Cup cycles, is not a great way to operate a business. And I think the Springboks have suffered from that. They’ve had a lot of players who have had a lot of Test matches and in terms of developing depth around that. And when you look at the All Blacks – and I don’t want to talk about the All Blacks all the time, but they are probably the measure – and the World Cup final in 2015 against Australia: of the 31 players at that final, any one of them could have started in that World Cup final, and we wouldn’t have too much of a drop-off in performance. And that says a lot of the development through that period. So when we lose five of six key players, the drop-off is not significant. So that’s a possibly a lesson that nations like the Springboks could learn from. The coaching setup, you need to develop your coaches as you develop your players and that’s another thing that New Zealand rugby and Steve (Hanson) have done so well: develop their coaches. They send their coaches offshore, to the top four teams in France, to the premiership and that sort of thing and then bring them back.  You know Jamie Joseph, one of the stars of New Zealand coaching at the moment, is in Japan at the moment plying his trade there. Dave Rennie, who had back-to-back rugby titles with the Chiefs. is now in Scotland coaching. So then it is a case of putting all the pieces together. And then there is the commercial side that has to get sorted out. There are a lot of parts that must come together. It’s not just the players, it’s not just the coaches, it’s about everyone working together for a common goal. And as a fan of South African rugby we need South Africa to be strong. And to be No 6 in the world is not where they should be with the talent and the resources that you have. I don’t need to tell anyone in South Africa that you need to be better.

Do you think that the players that we have at the moment have the potential to do the step-up to become competitive again in world rugby?

It’s about hard their work. You know we used to speak about Ben Smith who is undoubtedly one of the best players in the world at the moment. Three, four, five years ago he was a good player, but he worked hard. Beauden Barrett is another example of that. Probably the best example in the All Blacks at the moment is Ryan Crotty who is not a flashy player, but everything that he does, he does very accurately. His basic skills set is very good, he listens to what needs to be done and he works hard. I keep going back to that phrase ‘works hard’ but that’s what they do. And that’s what must be instilled in the South African players and the coaches.

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