I am sorry to continue the theme but:
- our breakdown work vs Boks was so poor technically, in numbers, in accuracy, timing etc , it is just obvious that Cheika, no matter how good he is, cannot and should not cover as national HC and forwards coach as he is now. We will not see, for example, England or the ABs make this massive managerial mistake. Cheika has been 'about to appoint a Wallaby forwards coach' all of 2015, but inexplicably none have been secured. This lack of coaching specialisation since the start of the Wallaby training period will prove very expensive in terms of critical, attention-to-detail aspects of Wallaby forwards preparation and execution. (I said this well before the Wallaby season started.) With that demonstrated standard of forwards work in broken play, we will never beat the ABs. Perhaps being 4th or 5th in the world doesn't bother us anymore.
(If people don't believe me as to the huge contribution a crack forwards coach can bring to forwards' skill and productivity, just go back and look at the vast improvements - and their game-winning impacts - in the Brumbies' forwards under L Fisher in 2012 and 2013.)
- the same applies to kicking. I was much encouraged a month or so ago when Cheika publicly indicated he'd drop the hapless Hill as a kind of oddly-retained part-time Aus-wide kicking coach. He'd achieved nothing, our kickers had not improved at all through the S15 season. To the best of my knowledge, Hill has still not been replaced and no full-time Wallaby kicking and catching coach has been retained.
Witness some of the consequences vs the Boks. Cooper's and Gits' kicking misses could easily have lost us the game, and so it will be as a near certainty come RWC time. It was notable how the Kiwi comms quoted Mick Byrne's views on various tactical matters during the AB vs Pumas game, Byrne being the ex-AFL Aussie full-time kicking and catching coach for the ABs, back at work in Test season.
But, oh no, we know better, we need no such specialist capability as we have such natural talent. We can afford to delay such an appointment, after all the RWC is 8 or so more weeks away.
We will pay a large price for an inadequately staffed national team of coaching specialists going into the RWC....well, at any time actually.
Succeeding at the very top level in a global sport is no longer the work of a good HC barking orders and running cultural improvement programs.
Rather, it's a highly competitive, sophisticated enterprise where science, specialist technical experience in many skill disciplines, the best video analysis, human and mental factors, S&C, etc all have to resourced and merged into a holistic management capability that equals or exceeds the best such capability possessed by the best opposition. Coaches like Clive Woodward and Graham Henry fully understood this, and were backed by their national RUs to the hilt to pay for it all and implement it.
As is typical of their general managerial standards and old-world thinking, our ARU is still not convinced. It may die wondering.
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