They are in a right tangle, seemingly frozen as they survey the state of the All Blacks nation and find worrying levels of disillusionment, despair and dear-god-what-is-happening-here.
This is not a crisis - the All Blacks have been in worse states than this, believe it or not, and it’s still just a game of rugby we are talking about.
But the facts are these: the All Blacks are playing poorly, they’ve dropped four out of five tests, the coaching staff led by beleaguered Ian Foster is not getting the best out of most of the players, and there is no sense this team has any clue where it is heading other than further down the world rankings.
And if you are New Zealand Rugby, the board of which meets today, you are left with the unfortunate reality that there is no obvious solution.
Do absolutely nothing and hope things magically fall into place? Not just less than ideal but basically a nonsensical plan that fails to address the very clear issues with our national team.
Sack Foster? As brutal as it sounds, that would make a good portion of the fan base reasonably happy. But it would also cost a bundle, cause massive disruption just a year out from the Rugby World Cup, potentially disenfranchise senior players (though, for all we know, they are agitating behind the scenes for change), be a wild departure from normal process, and offer no guarantee things would immediately get better.
Sack Foster’s assistant coaches? Change at any level can be healthy for a team but this would feel like a halfway-house sort of action aimed only at appeasing the angry masses.
Put Foster on notice? By all means, send firm notice that improvements must be made in the coming two tests in South Africa. All a bit wishy-washy, really, and is it likely things will be turned around that quickly anyway?
Get Joe Schmidt more involved? Starting to shape as one of the most likely pathways from this point, given Schmidt is joining the team anyway as a selector/analyst and is such a respected figure. But how much influence will he really have if the head coach has not changed?
Get rid of 10 players? I mean, sure. There are certainly question marks over a bunch of the current squad. But replace them with which players demanding All Blacks selection exactly? Apart from Ethan de Groot, Shannon Frizell (Highlanders bias alert) and perhaps one of these rising Crusaders props, I don’t see many fringe players unlucky to have missed the Irish series.
All the potential solutions come back to the head coach. This is elite sport, and the person at the top must set the weather.
Foster seems like a good man, and for all the talk over his credentials, he’s done plenty to secure a legacy as a decent coach.
But the 67% win rate, and the horrific recent form, speak to a real problem, and suggest the rumblings that Foster was a better fit as an assistant coach than a head coach were on point.
This slump is real, not a blip. There are few signs this All Blacks team knows what it is trying to achieve. Players are out of form or pursuing ineffective tactics. There are lineout issues, defensive issues, attacking fluency issues, you name it.
That all reflects terribly poorly on the coach.
NZR could have made the bold choice three years ago and gone with Scott Robertson. Or, as Gregor Paul wrote in the Herald yesterday, it could have done the smart thing even earlier and locked up the dream Highlanders-Japanese duo of Jamie Joseph and Tony Brown to work alongside Foster.
Hindsight suggests they were neither bold choices nor smart choices - they were the only choices.
Ironically, NZR is now spoiled for choice. It is just that none of them is particularly palatable.
