NZ Rugby confirms Steve Lancaster as permanent chief executive after six months in the interim chair

New Zealand Rugby has ended a slow-burning succession question, confirming on Thursday that interim chief executive Steve Lancaster will take the role on a permanent basis. The decision settles a search that began when Mark Robinson stepped down at the end of last year, and it gives the country’s national rugby body a long-term operational head for the first time in six months.

Board chair David Kirk announced the appointment, telling RNZ Sport the board had been deliberate in working through the recruitment process. “Steve has demonstrated exceptional leadership and is highly trusted by the board. He brings strong experience at all levels of the game,” Kirk said.

Lancaster himself struck a measured note. “I fully understand the responsibility that comes with the role and it’s an honour to be offered the position,” he said.

The appointment is effectively a vote of confidence in someone who has spent the past half year quietly steadying the ship. When Robinson departed in December, the running view from Wellington was that the board would look offshore, or at least to the corporate world, for a chief executive with deep commercial experience. Instead they have promoted from within, choosing the man who already had the keys.

Lancaster’s playing career was a brief one. He fronted as a lock for the Crusaders between 1997 and 2000, in the early years of the franchise’s dominance, before drifting into administration. By 2006 he was head of high performance at the Crusaders, a role he held for six years. Stints at Rugby Canada and Netball New Zealand followed, broadening his exposure beyond the New Zealand provincial system. He returned home in 2016 as general manager of community rugby for NZR, looking after the grassroots end of the game.

That community track record is one of the reasons his elevation has gone down well with the 26 provincial unions, who hold significant governance influence over the national body. As reported by the New Zealand Herald when his interim role was first floated, the more obvious internal successor, Chris Lendrum, opted not to apply. Lendrum has since stepped down after 20 years inside NZR.

The new permanent CEO inherits a balance sheet that runs to roughly $120 million in annual income and $262 million in equity tied to the Silver Lake partnership negotiated in 2022. He also takes on a senior leadership team that has been reshaped during the interim period, with new chief financial and chief commercial officers appointed in the past two months. Don Tricker, the former Black Sox coach, has just been hired as high performance director, an appointment Lancaster fronted on Newstalk ZB earlier in the week.

There are still open questions. Lancaster has been criticised in the past for lacking heavy commercial experience, particularly when broadcast and sponsorship contracts come up for renewal in the next cycle. The global season debate, which would shake up how international rugby fixtures are arranged through the year, also lands on his desk. So does the long, frequently public conversation about the financial sustainability of Super Rugby Pacific and the funding model for the provincial championship.

The Silver Lake relationship is itself an ongoing dossier. The American private equity firm bought into NZR’s commercial rights for a touch over $200 million in 2022, in a deal that was deeply contested by the Players Association and that promised, among other things, more sophisticated revenue generation around the All Blacks brand. Three years on, the returns from that investment are still being measured, and Lancaster is now the executive who will have to demonstrate that the partnership is actually delivering.

He brings two strengths to those problems. The first is that he is genuinely a rugby person, with friendships across the playing and coaching ranks. He played alongside All Blacks head coach Scott Robertson at the Crusaders, and he has worked closely with high performance staff at all five Super Rugby franchises. The second is that the past six months have given him an unusual run-in. Most newly appointed chief executives spend their first half year learning the file. Lancaster has effectively already done that, while running the place.

That alignment with the rugby world is part of why the appointment has not surprised observers. NZR had reset its commercial leadership, hired a new high performance director and rolled into a new Super Rugby season all without a permanent chief executive, and stakeholders had been wondering when the title at the top would stop being temporary.

Lancaster will work to a contract whose length and value have not been disclosed. He moves into the role at a moment when the All Blacks, fresh from Robertson’s first full year in charge, head into a year that includes a Bledisloe Cup defence and an end-of-year tour. The Black Ferns are also preparing for a busy international schedule. Both flagship sides will be a measure, in their own way, of whether NZR’s leadership reshuffle has settled the right people in the right seats.

What do you think of the appointment? Was promoting from within the right call, or should NZR have looked further afield? Drop a comment below.