How Dave Rennie went from hard-hitting midfielder to dream job of All Blacks coach
Saturday, 7 March 2026
Thirty-five years ago, Dave Rennie was hanging up the boots at the tender age of 27, a recurring shoulder injury, and a teaching career, seeing him wave goodbye to a boyhood dream of one day wearing the All Blacks jersey.
There would have been a fair few sighs of relief among opponents on the NPC scene, given the Wellington second-five had made a reputation for being a direct, hard-charger with ball in hand, and an equally physically abrasive presence on defence.
His legs were gigantic balls of muscle, yet there was subtlety to complement the bash and crash during a 59-game provincial career between 1986-1991, with Rennie rarely tucking the ball under the wing, and instead carrying out in front in two hands to leave defences guessing.
But when it all became a bit much on the body, and the reality had hit that he wouldn’t be making the step up to international level, it was hardly as if coaching the All Blacks became the new long-term vision, for the man who on Wednesday was indeed unveiled in that very role.
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In fact, Rennie rather just fell into the coaching game by way of his job at Fergusson Intermediate in Upper Hutt, where he and another teacher coached every sports team in the school.
It wasn’t until four years later that his focus narrowed in on rugby, thanks to an SOS from his Upper Hutt club five weeks before the start of the new season to take their senior side.
But it was far from the only thing keeping him busy. By this time, Rennie and wife Stephanie now had three sons on the scene, and, in quite the change of career, the pair, in combination with another couple, bought a local pub.
The Lonely Goatherd became the place to be, as the only real competition to the Cossie Club. But between pouring pints, Rennie was thirsty for work in the coaching realm, so not only spent three years running the senior club side, but also their under-21s, as well as his kids’ junior teams, and, yes even more, with Wellington B.
Then, come 2000 came his first NPC gig, with Wellington playing out of their shiny new waterfront stadium, and a team that featured such names as Christian Cullen, Tana Umaga and Jonah Lomu, and, incidentally the father of current All Black Wallace Sititi ‒ Samoa loose forward Semo Sititi.
The Lions went on to tip over Canterbury in the final in Christchurch for their first crown since 1986, marking quite the full circle given it was the year Rennie had debuted for the province.
Two playoff misses the next two years, though, then saw Rennie booted. But it could also have been the making of him, an early lesson in resilience and learning from adversity.
It was a humble trot back to Upper Hutt RFC for three more years coaching under-21s, along with some work with Murray Mexted’s IRANZ (International Rugby Academy of New Zealand) in Palmerston North, before another surprise short-notice rescue request with Manawatū.
The Turbos were hardly humming, and not ready for the step up to the expanded 2006 NPC, and duly didn’t win a game that first season. But Rennie, in a period where he also guided the New Zealand Under-20s to three-straight world championship crowns, did a rather decent salvage job.
He brought through the likes of homegrown talents Aaron Smith and Aaron Cruden, and capped his six-year stint with getting Manawatū to the top of the Championship division, and a narrow loss to Hawke’s Bay in the final.
It was learning to operate with limited resources, and that’s precisely what Rennie then walked into when handed his shot in Super Rugby with the Chiefs the following season.
While the other Kiwi squads oozed talent and x-factor, the Hamilton-based franchise were a largely unfancied lot, with only Richard Kahui, the recruited Cruden, and star signing Sonny Bill Williams having featured in the All Blacks’ World Cup squad the year prior.
But everyone knows what happened from there. Those two titles claimed in 2012 and 2013 remain the Chiefs’ only successes, and they came through carefully crafting a culture of belief, a sense of identity, and the catchcry of ‘good buggers’, as Rennie pored over footage and signed players on work ethic and character, not so much talent.
Liam Messam was skipper prior to Rennie’s arrival, but, much like the new coach did this week to the country’s players, tells The Post he remembers having it made loud and clear that there were absolutely no guarantees, and that everything must be hard-earned.
As it was, Messam was retained as leader, though in a co-captaincy model (with fellow forward Craig Clarke) that while now is nothing out of the ordinary, was a concept ahead of its time, and was born out of Rennie diving into the historical significance of Waikato Stadium, a former pā site which was led by not one, but two chiefs.
Rennie did plenty of other things differently, too. Messam says, while also now commonplace, it was the first time in the pre-season that the players touched rugby balls, as opposed to just running their guts out.
There were shrewd in-game tactics, too, a notable one being when the Chiefs went about planting seemingly blatant offside players in opposition backlines, but being legal because the players hadn't opted to form rucks.
Rennie’s Chiefs teams also made a habit of bringing the niggle, not taking any sort of backward step. So often leading that charge was a rising talent by the name of Brodie Retallick, a man Rennie has since linked with in Japan and who he conspicuously name-dropped at his first press conference as being in the form of his life and one particular player New Zealand Rugby could do with having back in the ranks.
It was a blend of brutality and brilliance that Rennie-run outfits became renowned for.
“He has an awesome eye for the game and the way he wants to play the game,” Messam says.
“I think people, especially with the players we had, thought we were a bit razzly-dazzly, but that’s actually practice, and actually structure and systems.
“He loves to play attacking football, which suited everybody, and gives a bit of excitement to the way you play.”
But it’s off the training paddock where Rennie’s work has proved arguably just as, if not more, instrumental, with his culture-building something that has continued to be a key trait in the nine years he’s been working offshore, from Glasgow to the Wallabies to Kobe.
First, there’s at a personal level, with time aplenty for genuine curiosity and conversation between human beings, as opposed to work colleagues.
“I guess he already sort of knew what you could do as a rugby player, he really wanted to get to know the person, not just surface-level, too, like actually connecting and getting to know you,” Messam says.
“You got to know him as a man as well, not just as your coach. So when you do that then you have that deep connection, you go out there and run through a brick wall for the man.”
Then there’s Rennie’s way with the teams as a whole. The guitar and melodic singing voice will come out, strong team-bonding activities undertaken, and ultimately a succeeding in getting his sides to believe in something bigger than themselves.
For the Chiefs, that came in the form of going to all parts of the region to connect with people in each spot, and being able to understand who it was they were representing.
“If you can turn Huntly from a rugby league town into a rugby town,” Messam chuckles… “Rens had a massive influence with that.” Another memory, meanwhile, was in the first pre-season and players being told to drop their bags on a trailer and paired up and issued $10 to get themselves from their Hamilton training base to Ōhope, again in order to build connections.
“He takes time to understand and learn stories about the place,” Messam says. “The beauty about the All Blacks and New Zealand, we have so many powerful meanings and stories here in our awesome country, so I’m sure he can really anchor onto something that will put the team in good stead.”
At 62, and with more than a quarter of a century of professional coaching in the bank, not to mention all those unpaid hours on the Upper Hutt club grounds, Rennie is comfortably the oldest of any All Blacks coach appointed in the professional era, and with around double the amount of head-coaching experience as many of those others.
The time has certainly been done, and now that All Blacks team he couldn’t quite crack as a player is all of a sudden about to be his to run.