Deans spells double trouble for NZRU

First off, congratulations to Robbie Deans - you deserve a shot at test rugby and your appointment came a week later than I wanted. But the NZRU is wrong to keep Deans at the Crusaders and the great coach himself may have bitten off a bit too much for the moment.

Deans' time is now and the Australians were quick to recognise that. So quick they were talking to him even before the Wallabies exited the World Cup at the quarter-finals stage.

But when the All Blacks were dumped out of the tournament a few hours later, the NZRU should have been on the hot-line to Deans there and then.

Instead they have been happy to see him go. Well, almost go. He will be around for a wee while yet and that's a concern.

He is a man in his prime, a coach at the top of his profession, who loves the nuances of the modern game but isn't afraid to rely on a simplistic approach in key areas.

No one should begrudge him pursuing his own interests once he was overlooked for the All Blacks job.

But to now have a foot in both camps doesn't quite seem right.

Having snubbed Deans for the top job, the NZRU seemed strangely weak to not jettison him from the Crusaders.

They spoke of Deans' impeccable integrity and no one would question that.

But it just doesn't seem quite right that he will now continue to be working with a fair chunk of the leading All Blacks for the next four months, bedding in their games under the new laws. And all the time he will be plotting against those very same players as he looks to chart his course with the Wallabies.

Somewhere in the washup to Deans' Wallabies appointment it was suggested the NZRU feared a public backlash if they sent the Crusaders coach packing. Sounds conceivable given their reactive nature at Wellington headquarters.

But this was a time when they needed to be as hard-lined with Deans as they have been with their total lack of accountability for the World Cup disaster.

If Robbie, quite rightly given the way he was treated here, wanted to jump into bed with the Aussies for the next four years that should have started last Friday as far as New Zealand was concerned. Full stop.

How is he going to take orders from Graham Henry now as the All Blacks coach looks for a few favours from his Super 14 coaches in the buildup to next year's test season?

Deans' intellectual property on New Zealand rugby is surpassed by few in the game here.

The NZRU put up a giant roadblock in the national coaching structure with their decision to reappoint Henry, Steve Hansen and Wayne Smith for the next two years - and probably longer.

The pathway for the next tier of coaches is now clogged up thicker than the Auckland motorway at rush hour. It's why someone as talented as Warren Gatland saw the writing on the wall and headed off to Wales before this latest chapter unfolded.

Deans' decision to move across the Tasman presented the NZRU with another chance to open a coaching avenue at the Crusaders.

But they, in their wisdom, chose to keep an "Australian" in charge.

The presumption is that the Crusaders themselves were behind the push to keep Deans in red and black for one last campaign because they are fearful that their homegrown alternatives won't quite stack up just yet.

But surely this was a chance to push someone in at the deep end and see if they could swim amidst the best structure of any of the five New Zealand franchises.

Then there's the Australian side to this equation. They were so desperate to lure Deans across the Tasman that they openly said they would be comfortable with him fulfilling his Super 14 obligations first.

Secretly they probably didn't believe the NZRU would allow him to handle both jobs.

Now Deans is left trying to manage two massive assignments at once.

By the time he finally touches down in Sydney to don his Wallabies tracksuit he could well be exhausted.

A Super 14 campaign is a massive task in itself and this one has been made all the more difficult by the introduction of the new laws.

Somehow at the same time he has got to sort out his assistants for the Wallabies job, get them rubber stamped by the Australian hierarchy. All the while he will need to be monitoring the Australian Super 14 sides as closely as his own Crusaders, weighing up some crucial selection decisions for his test team.

And as he searches for a fifth Super rugby title he has to come up with strategies to lift a decidedly average Wallabies team to the next level, with little more than a couple of weeks after the Super 14 wraps up to Australia's first test of 2008.

Deans is good. But is he good enough to do two jobs at once?

We constantly question the NZRU's judgements of our national game. But in one of the strangest years on record doesn't this sound like one of the more bizarre decisions?

Would true blue Aussie David Nucifora been afforded the same luxury with the Blues if he had landed the Wallabies job? I don't think so. Pat Lam would have been brought into the Eden Park mix in an instant.

- © Fairfax NZ News