Legendary All Black Tana Umaga has arguably the toughest job in Super Rugby Pacific as he is set to lead Moana Pasifika into battle in this year’s competition as their head coach.

Umaga has plenty of coaching experience as he had head coaching roles at Toulon, Counties Manukau and the Blues, and was an assistant coach for Samoa at last year’s Rugby World Cup in France.

However, he will be the first to acknowledge that his role as Moana Pasifika’s boss will be a very difficult, but special, assignment.

“Assisting Pasifika players for the betterment of not just themselves and Moana, but also Samoa and Tonga,” he told Stuff. “That made it easier for me to make this decision.

“I have had head coaching experience and there were tough lessons I had to learn around that.

“But also, watching other people working in that role and learning from them some of the things I can bring forward to this role now. That made it easier for me to say I’m ready for this.

“With being an assistant coach, I enjoy that. You just focus on one role, you go home and it’s pretty easy, you don’t have to think about much else, other than that role.

“Head coach is different, there’s a lot more on it. But I believe I’m better equipped to handle those things outside of it and build a group that I know can handle it as well.”

There is extra pressure on Umaga as Moana’s head coach as his job is not just about securing victories for the team. He also has to bring younger players through to make Samoa and Tonga’s Test teams better.

His predecessor, Aaron Mauger, came to terms with that even if it meant he had to leave out his best players for some matches, to give chances to others in the squad.

“That’s an understanding and realisation that there’s a big picture to what we’re doing,” Umaga said.

“In Super Rugby, we’re still trying to get those wins. It is a fine balancing act and we won’t know if we’ve got it right until we start playing.

“Learning from previous campaigns and the experiences we’ve had as coaches, we have got an experienced coaching group (Tom Coventry and Stephen Jones) and taking from this player group that’s been around for a while, we know the big picture, but we also know the responsibility for Moana and Pasifika rugby, is to get rewards and we need to start having success on the field.

Source: Planet Rugby