After the losses in the 2nd and 3rd games, these have been what Foster has said. It's the same, general, broad, vague, directionless, answers, which indicates that "for some reason", he doesn't really know what's going on.
In 8 years with the Chiefs, Ian Foster won 52 games, lost 46, and drew 5. About a 50% win rate. Immediately after he left, the Chiefs won 24 of their next 32 games under Dave Rennie, a 75% win rate. There was a ridiculous comment that this is not a strong argument. Er. Ok.
In international rugby, Ian Foster has coached the ABs in 24 games, winning 16. However, 5 of those wins come against fiji, Tonga, USA, and Italy - basically walkovers.
In the games against tier one opponents, Foster is 11 of 19. Against the 3 top teams in the world - France, SA, and Ireland, Foster is 2 from 7.
So, the question is, how bad must Foster do before he leaves? This is really hypothetical since this is just an internet forum. And I understand some fans don't think we are all that bad and Foster has been a bit unlucky. That's fine - I think any view is plausible. But just with regards to the question, which Pillock had also previously asked.
Regardless of whether you think it is Foster's fault or not, how bad must his record be before he gets sacked? Or is he unsackable because the WC is next year?
On bad starts: "We talked a lot about it,” Foster said. “There’s different things you do at the start. But for some reason, we’re just not as calm. It’s more the defence area. We’re getting a little bit fidgety early. We’re letting a few holes and Ireland aren’t a team that you can allow to get behind you. That’s when they play an up-tempo game. And we’ve done that and it’s hurt us. We worked on some things but again we just made a couple of errors early and they got that early momentum. We tried hard, we wanted to start well,” Foster said. “Again we made a couple of defensive errors early that put us under a lot of pressure. Came back really strong (after halftime) but they wrestled a little bit of momentum at key points in that second half that really stopped us really having a good crack at it."
“I thought we struggled to get the real territory that we needed and probably played too much rugby in our own half,” Foster said.
“They flattered up their D-line and we perhaps needed to be more three-dimensional with our attack, I think, and turn them around a little bit."