Alan Jones' latest, and he doesn't miss:
Rugby Australia tent doors zipped shut with grassroots outside
ALAN JONES
RADIO BROADCASTER
1 MINUTE AGO OCTOBER 18, 2018
NO COMMENTS
In The Weekend Australian on Saturday, Wayne Smith purported to critique some of what I have said about Australian rugby *administration.
Of course, in typical fashion, he dealt out a few backhanders as well and couldn’t resist referencing the Opera House.
He managed to extrapolate from my persistent and accurate arguing that there are people on the board of Rugby Australia “who know nothing about rugby” that that was because there were women.
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And so we’re into the misogynist stuff again.
I’m more than happy to conduct a Q&A with all the Rugby Australia board members and I know that it would be easy to prove that they know very little about coaching.
But they’re going to hold *Michael Cheika to account.
How you do that, I don’t know.
I should point out that the article prompted comment, as well, from former board member Geoffrey Stooke, an outstanding West Australian servant of the game.
He corrected many of the so-called “facts” in Smith’s article.
And of the article, Stooke says: “The sale of the Rebels to the VRU was done without formal board approval, despite the board being advised previously that any ‘on-selling’ would require board approval. When this occurred I asked how this could happen without board approval and I was advised they’d found a ‘loophole’. This seemed strange as subsequent information suggests the ARU was directly involved in the transaction … with the Rebels refusing all attempts to ‘depart’ (and this was stated publicly) the only team that the ARU could legally, forcibly remove was the Western Force. This suggests that the so-called ‘evaluation process’ was a sham.”
That’s precisely what I have written in the past. If Smith wants to suggest I should “work within the rugby system”, then may I suggest to him that when he writes about the system, he should make sure he gets it right.
I have written 28 columns for this paper and in all of them I have sought to do two things: point out the problem and volunteer a *solution.
At no point has anyone from Rugby Australia spoken to me.
I was invited to coach the Barbarians last year, not by Rugby Australia. At no time did anyone from Rugby Australia speak to me or our visiting Barbarian guests.
If I might say immodestly, I have coached premiership sides at school level, sub-district level, grade level and national level.
I say that only because I am writing with an inside understanding of what works.
I also referenced last week the formation of the Australian Club Rugby Association. It’s not being set up to take over the running of rugby. It’s to give voice to grassroots rugby in Australia’s rugby* *future.
At present, the grassroots have no voice and no power. This is a major flaw in the structure of rugby in Australia.
Smith wants me to get inside the tent. Wayne, which bloody tent?
You see, there are some so-called rugby journalists who live off the scraps thrown to them by Rugby Australia.
Why would they bite the hand that feeds them and write of the *issues that I’m addressing?
What does it say about an organisation like Rugby Australia when it feeds “exclusive stories” to its “mates”? Does that quarantine them from serious media criticism?
I’m not a journalist. I’m a coach. And I’ve been asked to voice my opinions publicly. I’ve done that for over 30 years. I hope I’m speaking from an informed perspective.
I’ve spoken before about the Australian Schoolboys’ tent. Well, its committee is made up of two delegates from each state and territory, but NSW gets three.
Australian Schools Rugby Union president Bob Wallace is not even at a school and hasn’t been a teacher for years. Neither is the senior vice-president, Damien Barker. Nor are another five committee members.
Many of these people are not even teaching. But they run the Australian Schoolboys like it’s their own personal boys’ club.
There has been no injection of fresh blood in the ASRU committee for years.
Young, talented teacher-coaches and administrators can’t get a look in. The tent is locked and trespassers are not welcome. It should be folded or burnt down.
What about the high-performance tent? Ben Whittaker has a credibility problem.
How can he keep his position as Rugby Australia high-performance manager when his brother, Chris, was appointed as an assistant coach at the Waratahs without the position being advertised? There appeared to be no due process.
How does a young, talented coach get inside the tent when the tent is seemingly locked to all but those with mates on the inside?
And how can you appoint a coach when you know little about coaching?
This is not the first time this has happened. Tim Walsh was appointed the men’s sevens coach without it being publicly advertised.
Were the jobs that are held with the Wallabies by Stephen Lark*ham, Nathan Grey and Simon Raiwalui advertised?
They were appointed to Wallabies coaching positions. Was there due process?
At no stage was I appointed a Wallabies coach without the job being advertised and I can remember some spirited cross-examination from an interview panel comprised of people with scarifying rugby brains.
Now, those appointed to Wallabies positions may well have been the preferred choice of the national coach. But surely there should be a process.
We are having massive defence problems at the moment. Grey was appointed the Wallabies defence coach despite a poor record in his last season at the Waratahs.
Now there’s talk that he’ll become the attack coach and Lark*ham the defence coach.
Well if Whittaker is in charge of high performance, did he challenge any of this?
How do you get an invitation to get inside the high-performance tent? I think the tent needs a spring clean.
What about the Rugby Australia tent? When Andrew Forrest offered to save the Force and plough money into our game, he was turned away from the tent by Cameron Clyne.
Forrest recently offered to revitalise rugby in western Sydney but again was denied access to the tent.
Exactly how does one get invited inside the tent by Rugby Australia?
The game is on its knees and chairman Cameron Clyne and CEO Raelene Castle are too paranoid to trust one of the country’s most generous philanthropists. Successful people such as Forrest don’t offer their assistance every day.
Is Rugby Australia in a position to act this way? It seems to me that those on the board of Rugby Australia behave as if the tent is theirs.
Australian rugby, the real tent, belongs to the people who have invested their lives in the game — those who coach teams, flip burgers, mark lines and wash jerseys.
It doesn’t belong to a bunch of well-paid board members or failed rugby bureaucrats.
And what about the Rugby Australia media tent?
How is it that Rugby Australia staff are also earning a quid commenting on the game?
Surely if they’re paid by Rugby Australia there should be some disclosure that their opinions might not be independent.
People like Rod Kafer are on the payroll of Rugby Australia and the payroll of Fox Sports.
They’re inside two tents at the same time.
Is the game in such bad shape that we need to control the message in order to minimise the damage to our game and the drop in TV ratings?
Perhaps if we didn’t have a controlled message, more people would keep watching.
The rugby public are not mugs.
They know the game because they live and breathe it.
This is another tent that needs cleaning out.
But at day’s end, why would anyone want to get inside any one of the rugby tents?
They’re chock full of failed people seeming to feather their own nests and improve their CVs at the expense of our game.
And at the expense of the people who are the game — the grassroots players, parents, coaches, team managers and bottle-washers.
If we were talking about a Third World country, what would be the word used to describe this closed shop behaviour?
At Rugby Australia they call it corporate governance. I would call it something else.
END ARTICLE
All I'd add to the above is how much I used to look forward to Wayne Smith's articles every weekend last season because he wasn't afraid to raise uncomfortable points about RA's handling of the Force cull and the game in general. Now, he's not above blaming disgruntled Force fans for the Wallabies' disappointing results this season, or for the performances of our former stars in the Wallabies setup. I don't know what's behind his shift in attitude, but what does it say when Alan Jones is the last voice out there willing to challenge the game's powers when the professional journalists won't?
