“Everyone knows he’s (Wisemantel) a good friend of mine, he’s had success where he’s gone, he’ll be a welcome addition,” said Johnson.

“(Taylor) – good mate of mine, worked with him, good skills, he’s certainly on the list, both are.

“We haven’t put a deadline on it but we’re going through the process.

“We’ve just concluded this one and we’ve spoken about the options that are available. We’d like to see that it moves quite quickly now.

“At least we can tell people who they’re going to be reporting to, that’s a big part of the process.

“There’ll be a couple of sleepless nights and a lot of phone calls over the next couple of weeks.”

Appreciative of the issues some have with his nationality, Rennie said it was important to have an all-Australian staff and to be help develop coaching talent.

“Obviously I’ve been doing a lot of the work around (hiring assistant coaches), I’ve been talking a lot to (Rugby Australia director of rugby) Scott Johnson, there’s been a review process happening and there’s going to be a little bit of change there but in that group we need massive work ethic, we need innovation, we need people who are going to roll their sleeves up and so on,” he said.

“I want a group that will challenge each other, challenge me to get the best out of our players. So, getting the right people in place is paramount initially and obviously, the relationship stuff – Super Rugby teams are crucially important.

“I’ve always surrounded myself with people who will challenge. I think we’ve got to have that in our environment whether it’s, we’re certainly going to poke players in the chest and we expect the same back and so I don’t want yes men in our group.

“That’s important, we’ve got to have a mind of developing coaches and creating opportunities and so on.

‘We’ve certainly got some names that will be clarified over the coming weeks.”