According to former Springboks coach Gary Gold, Leon MacDonald and Scott Robertson parted ways last year because MacDonald didn’t agree with Robertson’s more conservative style.
MacDonald unexpectedly left the set-up in August 2024, right before they left New Zealand for their two Rugby Championship matches in South Africa.
Although Robertson acknowledged that their coaching philosophies differed, it was unclear what those distinctions were.
Gold, 57, thinks that MacDonald wanted the All Blacks to be far more daring, and he thinks that their individual strategies hold the key to the solution.
Robertson’s ‘Test match-based’ style
He said on the Boks Office podcast, “I think that with the MacDonald and Razor thing, Leon might have wanted to play a lot more and Razor might have wanted to play a more Test match-based game, which is a little bit more dependent on territory.
” Gold likened the relationship between Rassie Erasmus and Swys de Bruin to MacDonald’s brief tenure in the job. After being hired as the Boks’ attack coach in 2018, De Bruin, whose Lions squad played some captivating rugby, resigned after just one year.
He and Erasmus had a “different outlook as far as game philosophy was concerned,” the 64-year-old subsequently confirmed to News 24.
For the benefit of the players
Former Springboks boss Nick Mallett, who was also on the show, says that coaches will always argue over the direction of the team, but insists that they must eventually agree on a philosophy for the players’ sake.