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Published: Nov. 2, 2023, 7:16 p.m.

Departing All Blacks coach Ian Foster has condemned the growing abuse professional sportspeople and officials are encountering.\xa0

His comments came after news Wayne Barnes is retiring from refereeing following an international career spanning 17 years and a record 111 tests across five World Cups.\xa0

The Englishman was reportedly the subject of death threats in the aftermath of the World Cup final.\xa0

Foster told told Mike Hosking that some of the feedback is unacceptable.\xa0

Meanwhile, Foster maintains he's spoken to nobody about future coaching opportunities but isn't ruling out any avenues yet.\xa0

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Revealed: Foster spurned job talks on eve of World Cup

-NZ Herald

Departing\xa0All Blacks\xa0coach Ian Foster has revealed he was approached about coaching jobs on the eve of the\xa0Rugby World Cup\xa0but refused to discuss further so he could be fully focussed on the side\u2019s campaign.\xa0

Foster\u2019s side fell just short of claiming a fourth\xa0World Cup\xa0title after going down\xa012-11 to the Springboks in Paris. Scott Robertson now takes over as All Blacks coach.\xa0

Talking to Newstalk ZB\u2019s Mike Hosking Breakfast, Foster said he wants to continue coaching but said he hasn\u2019t talked to anyone including Rugby Australia after the departure of\xa0Eddie Jones.\xa0

\u201cI\u2019m not saying anything about my future at the moment, but all I\u2019d say is I haven\u2019t spoken to anyone about anything and I\u2019ve done that deliberately,\u201d he told the Mike Hosking Breakfast.\xa0

\u201cI had a couple of options before the World Cup that I basically said, if you want to talk to me, you have to wait till after the World Cup.\xa0

\u201cBecause I don\u2019t want this team or in fact, this country, thinking that I was busy trying to sort myself out before the biggest event.\xa0

\u201cAnd for me, I wanted my team to know that I was 100 percent focused on the team. I\u2019d like to think that everyone saw that and now I\u2019ll take my time and figure out what\u2019s next. The timing is not perfect because a lot of jobs have all gone, but that\u2019s ok. I was willing to take that risk.\u201d\xa0

Foster joined the All Blacks as an assistant coach in 2012 and was part of the coaching staff when the side won the World Cup title in 2015. He took the reins\xa0from Steve Hansen following the 2019 World Cup. Under Foster, the All Blacks won four Rugby Championship titles and retained both the Freedom Cup and Bledisloe Cup. He has the third most wins as an All Black coach (32 from 46 tests).\xa0

Foster was asked whether he wanted to continue coaching at the highest level.\xa0

\u201cWell, I think that\u2019s one of the options. You consider two things. You got the club stuff in Europe. You\u2019ve got Japan, and then there\u2019s the international game.\xa0

\u201cBut it\u2019s immensely difficult to talk about trying to coach another country when you\u2019ve just had 12 years with the best team in the world and who\u2019s so close to my heart and quite frankly I just need to breathe a little bit before I go down that path,\u201d he revealed.\xa0

Ian Foster at peace with coaching era\xa0

Hosking asked Foster whether he was at peace with his time as All Blacks coach.\xa0

\u201cI think I am but I\u2019m still going over everything.\xa0

\u201cWe went into a World Cup that everyone thought, we all knew, was going to be probably one of the toughest ever and nearly nailed it.\xa0

\u201cSo, I\u2019m at peace that we did everything we could that we gave it everything we got but still there\u2019s always a massive disappointment we couldn\u2019t get across the line.\xa0

\u201cIt\u2019s been interesting four years. It started with the board and players fighting at each other over Silver Lake and that took about 12 months to get resolved. It set a sort of a platform of a niggly relationship between the players and the board, which wasn\u2019t actually anything to do with me. But that was the paradigm that we came into.\xa0

\u201cWe then went through Covid and the way we structured our seasons became very different. For example, I think we only played South Africa once in New Zealand in the four years.\xa0

\u201cBut everything settled down and I feel we got ourselves into a really good position going into that World Cup and ultimately that was the goal. I\u2019m pretty proud of the effort that my coaching group, my management team put through and knowing that that things were over at the end of the campaign, but we were able to keep our focus singular on what we needed to do.\xa0

\u201cAnd for that, I\u2019m really proud of that group.\u201d\xa0

\u201cWhen I got the job, it always seemed to be under a condition, didn\u2019t it? It was the two year contract. They had another candidate that half the people wanted and from then on it was the leaves that they looked at everything that we did.\xa0

\u201cAnd so once people fix their minds on an opinion, it\u2019s very hard to move them and to be fair, I\u2019m relaxed with that.\xa0

\u201cI\u2019d like to think that now they realise that I lead a group that was highly motivated that could really produce a team that can win a World Cup. And the support that I\u2019ve had has been phenomenal.\u201d\xa0

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