‘We didn’t share the same values’: Rennie breaks long silence on his Wallabies axing

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.”

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.”

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.”

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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