I think the issue with cooper is that he coached a star studded Hurricanes side for 7(?) years without a ***le, they did make the semi's 4 times and the final once. But never won despite having a ridiculous pool of stars and All Blacks like Umaga, Nonu, Weepu, Gear, So'oialo, Colins, Conrad Smith, Tamati Elison, Tialata, Schwalger, Andrew Hore, Jason Eaton, Jeremy Thrush etc, etc, etc...
He was a successful assistant coach at the crusaders but so was Mark Hammett.
mark Hammett may not have been a popular or successful coach but what he did was recognize that there was a serious issue with team culture at the hurricanes under Cooper and he tried to fix it. Some of the credit for the Canes success now has to go to Hammett. As the canes were under Cooper they needed to take a few steps back to get moving forward again.
Part of the disappointment is that there were whispers floating around that maybe a big name overseas kiwi coach would come back and coach the Chiefs.
Hopefully he goes well, the two keys for me are:
1, Maintaining the team culture which Renee has done an awesome job with. Forget the off field stuff that has dogged the team, young guys do stupid things sometimes and they had a bad run. Generally the culture at the chiefs is very good.
2, Transitioning McKenzie into 10 - absolutely no doubt in my mind he is a world class 10 who can win super rugby ***les and 10 is also his best position.
