Dave Rennie has been appointed as the first All Blacks coach from Pasifika heritage

It came down to two in the end, with David Rennie edging out Jimmy Joseph – the former All Black who coached Japan to the quarter-finals of the Rugby World Cup on home soil in 2019 – in the final round of interviews.

The headline figures from Rennie’s final spell in Test rugby don’t make for great reading. He left Australia in January 2023 with a win rate of just 38%. One of the losses on his card was their first ever defeat to Italy.

However, those who were looking into the finer details felt that he had been put through too much difficulty. Negotiating the Covid period and all the restrictions it brought, coupled with a host of injuries in key positions, Rennie has continued to foster a unity among the Wallabies that was evident in three wins over South Africa and a successive defeat to England in 2022.

His final few games as Australia coach, at the end of 2022, summed it all up. On the face of it, they have only managed two victories – against Scotland and Wales – and that historic defeat to Italy in a five-match round in the northern hemisphere looks below par. However, the other two results were losses by one and three points respectively to France and Ireland, teams that would go into the Rugby World Cup the following year as major contenders for the title.

Rennie’s record was certainly good. Eddie Jones, who replaced him for the 2023 Rugby World Cup, was divisive off the field and then disastrous on it, with the Wallabies losing to Fiji and Wales and failing to exit their group for the first time in the tournament’s history.

Rennie was also widely respected during his three years at Glasgow Warriors, where he led the team to the Pro14 final in 2019, and went about his business in a calm and measured manner.

He will need composure in a high-pressure job that seemed to trouble his predecessor Scott Robertson. But Rennie will have another crack at the testing stage.