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Veteran coach Stuart Lancaster has criticised Rugby Australia’s bosses for how they treated them after rejecting him as the Wallabies’ head coach successor to Joe Schmidt.
The Roar revealed England’s 2015 World Cup coach had been interviewed before RA opted to give the job to Les Kiss, with Joe Schmidt staying in place until mid-next year.
Lancaster, speaking his Leaders on Leaders YouTube series, said he was interviewed twice for the position after but left “disappointed” after RA didn’t keep him updated on the recruitment process. He had been let go by French club Racing 92 and went into the interviews excited by the prospect of returning to international coaching.
“Australia rang and I definitely felt they said very strongly. ‘Listen, Joe is going to finish after Rugby Championship, we need someone to come in and help us lead into the 2027 World Cup’.
“I felt certainly burnt out but when the call came I was, ‘This is an exciting challenge, a chance to go to a different country’. I thought I learned a lot from England, Ireland, and France.
“I thought diversity of thought in a country is really important and I thought the knowledge I gained in those roles and the pathways stuff I had done and the understanding of that and the different gameplan, so lots of things I could bring.
“Also the excitement of going to work with a talented group of players who I felt having watched their games could be improved quite quickly. And going into high performance in Australia where you have got league coaches, rules coaches, AIS is excellent so the excitement of going and learning from other coaches and passing on what you have learned in a new environment was appealing.
“When the call came I felt I don’t feel so burnt out, I had the feeling this is something I can commit to. The challenge from the family point of view is I put it under pressure in lots of different ways and now I am going to do it again. I’m potentially going to live in Australia. My mum is 82. What do you do with the two dogs? Can my wife make it out? Will I live on my own like I did in Leinster? So there was all that to consider but at the time it was definitely positive.”
From the excitement of his links to the role, there was deflation as time lagged without contact from RA
“It’s a shame. The initial enthusiasm for the role remained. This was the start of February and when I finally realised I wasn’t going to go to Australia was last week, so we are talking nearly three months.
“You present your vision to the panel, you do a second interview, you meet key people, you wait for feedback. One of the lessons I would give any organisation is my personal experience that I have just gone through: say there are three or four candidates to interview for the role, your decision as an organisation whether you are giving someone the job or not is life-changing for the candidate.
(Photo By Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile via Getty Images)
“If you don’t give them the role, their life will carry on in the same direction, but if you give them the role their life will change direction considerably, so you have a responsibility to be honest and transparent and consistent with your communication.
“So if someone presents, like I did to a panel and then I wait for feedback and you don’t get any, I chased the feedback up and said, ‘What is happening?’ They said, ‘We are just going through the process, we will be back in contact’.
“And then the-do-what-you-say-you-are-going-to-do piece is actually critical now… Eventually, you start thinking I am going to have to ring to find out what is going on because life is on hold, you don’t know and there are shifting sands, things are changing but I am not really clear on why they are changing.”
He said he understood that it was a complex recruitment process but wanted to be kept informed of the progress.
“There might be a different dynamic at play, they are interviewing different coaches or they are thinking we are going to go down this route and not that route.
“Whatever. I don’t mind. Just tell me. Don’t not say anything.
“Everyone is grown up here. I just need to know what is going on and to not have that the more and more it went on, the more disappointed I became. In the end, last week I got a phone call to say actually Joe is going to stay on now until 2026 and there is no job at all. I was like, ‘Ah’.
“So for the last three months I was sat waiting thinking am I potentially going to live in Sydney and how would it work, this is my vision for the role and I’m getting excited about it to the point where you are thinking I am not sure this is not going to happen and then to find out it is definitely not going to happen.
“The feedback I gave was one of the rules of leadership, that bad news should never come as a shock so if you had known this was potentially going to happen, you should have let me know so at least then I could have moved on and there are other opportunities out there so why wait.
“So, how am I feeling at the moment? The disillusionment piece (from being sacked by Racing 92) has definitely not been helped by the process I have been through. I wish they just told me that.”