Rugby in these professional days is full of buzz words.
Work-ons, big pictures, environment, challenges.
Another one is pathway.
Players are on pathways, from the moment they play well at school until they get to put on the black jersey and play for the national side.
Coaches, too, get on pathways.
These days, aspiring coaches get into coaching almost straight after they finish playing. Not many of them muck around with tutoring a club side.
The prospective coaches get a provincial side and then go up the ladder looking to break into Super rugby.
The only issue with that pathway and, now, through Hansen's re-signing with the All Blacks, is the big step to the very top is blocked.
Hansen will have been in the top job for eight years by the time the 2019 World Cup rolls round.
That is a long stint, on the back of Graham Henry's eight-year reign at the All Black helm before him.
That means two coaches in the top job in the country for 16 years.
In that time, many, many coaches have come along, done the job in New Zealand and then moved on.
Henry and Hansen are good coaches who, by and large, have been successful in what they have done.
But one wonders if the door being closed to so many and open to so few at the very top level is harming the game below.
Good coaches such as Todd Blackadder and Jamie Joseph, are moving on because they simply cannot get a go at the highest level.
Coaches are just like anyone in life - the more they do the job, the better they get at it.
But with the cupboard door well and truly shut up above them, they then step aside and move away.
Now, I am not calling for Hansen to go just for the sake of keeping those down below happy or because he has been there too long.
But perhaps he needed to freshen his coaching team up a bit.
Mike Cron was supposed to go last year but has decided to hang around for another couple of years, which will undoubtedly turn into a four-year stint.
Perhaps Cron would have been better suited moving on to be replaced by the likes of Joseph or Blackadder.
Kicking coach Mick Byrne has gone too, and his role has been passed to Ian Foster.
The one worry is that, coming into the 2020 season, Hansen will give it away and the cupboard will be bare for replacements. They would have all scampered overseas and not been willing to come back.
The potential candidates will all be overseas, locked into watertight contracts, getting the big money and not interested in a return to the All Blacks.
New Zealand Rugby has said it is fully aware of that situation and is talking - privately - to coaches who want to be in the mix come 2020.
However, there is talk and then there is action. Perhaps a promotion of someone like Joseph, Blackadder or Dave Rennie after the World Cup last year would have sent a clearer signal.
As it is now, Foster, who is 51, must be favourite to take over from Hansen in a few years just as Hansen took over from Henry.
There is nothing bad in that and he is a good coach. It's just a shame so many have gone before him.
