Mains, the 79-year-old former Otago and All Black player and coach, is well known for his tough and direct comments, but yesterday he showed a softer side.
"It's definitely a cut-throat environment, but before you take it on, you know that that's what it's like, and that's what you've got to put up with.
"I know how he must be feeling, and I want to be the last person to make it worse for him.
"Whether he deserved it, whether he didn't, whatever — it's been a very traumatic experience for him, and I'm certainly not going to make it any worse."
Mains left the All Blacks coaching position in 1995 under tough circumstances himself. .
He was appointed head coach in 1992 and led the team to the 1995 Rugby World Cup final against home team South Africa, where they lost 15-12.
Despite claims two-thirds of the All Blacks were deliberately poisoned and significantly weakened before the final, Mains’ time as coach was marked by high expectations and scrutiny, and following the World Cup defeat, he chose to resign rather than be forced out.
Surprisingly, Mains refused to endorse Highlanders and All Blacks XV head coach Jamie Joseph for the now vacant All Blacks top job, for fear his opinion may influence the selection process.
"Yeah, look, I've had a lot of inquiry about commenting on it, and because of my close relationship with Jamie, I'm not going to comment publicly on it.
"I just don't want to do anything that might cause some disruption to the process.
"It's also out of respect for Jamie."
On social media, former Highlander and All Black Lima Sopoaga posted a photo of Jamie Joseph and Tony Brown, and said, "If I could choose the next All Blacks coaching set up, it would start here."
"Japan 2019, Highlanders 2015, took teams with far less talent and coached them to greatness.
"... Just think what he could do with a stacked deck?
"If you get him and Brownie, I think our chances of bringing back a wc [World Cup] dramatically increase. Just my two cents."
His comments garnered major support from others on social media.
He said NZR was now a "very different beast" to the one it was 12 months ago.
Randell believed NZR had been in a funk over the past seven years, and there were indicators suggesting there was disillusionment with the game in New Zealand, with a lot of issues between NZR and the provinces.
As a result of that, David Kirk was appointed as the new chairman, and now the union was looking for a new chief executive officer.
"Last week, head of high performance has basically gone ... those things don't happen in a vacuum.
While Robertson had recorded a 74% win rate with the All Blacks, Randell said the performances were not good enough.
An internal review pointed to a culture problem in the All Blacks set-up, which led to record-breaking defeats, he said.
"If you have a good culture of the team, you do not have two of your leading assistant coaches leave.
"Irrespective of win, lose or draw ... at least the performance of the team should give you some encouragement that they're on the right track, and if you've got a good culture of the team, you don't have colossal losses to the Springboks."
He said losses to nations such as Ireland and Argentina had become "commonplace", which pointed to a "terrible" culture.
"They've got institutional knowledge that's been missing from the New Zealand Rugby board for a long time." — additional reporting RNZ
Poll results
In an informal online and phone poll yesterday, a significant majority of Otago Daily Times readers backed Jamie Joseph for the All Blacks top job.
Given four options, 1866 (84%) of the 2438 respondents picked Joseph as their preferred next All Blacks coach.
Joe Schmidt was a distant second on 403 (10.4%), with Dave Rennie at 106 (4.3%) and Vern Cotter on 63 (1.3%).
