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Australian Rugby / RA

WorkingClassRugger

Michael Lynagh (62)
Joe Schmidt is leaving the Ireland job post RWC. So, I have a suggestion. Accept that we're essentially screwed for the RWC. We might not be a complete disaster at best but we won't get past the quarters. Focus on the future and get working on getting Schmidt on board.
 

Joe Blow

John Hipwell (52)
I think we often forget that any 'new assistants' worth their professional salt would by definition want to make major changes to almost all aspects of Wallaby selection and preparation. If that was not largely true why hire them?

Managerially, saying 'we'll keep a chronically underperforming boss and replace his poor underlings with better ones' almost always ends in tears and more dysfunction not least of which is the loss of clarity and effectiveness of the new elite team's communications with their staff/players.

That is true in most cases but Cheika seems to micro manage his team. As someone alluded to up the page a bit, we don’t even know who does what in his coaching setup. He keeps his cards very close to his chest and has way too much control with how the Wallabies are run. RA are as weak as a wet paper bag and he knows it.
He will not allow his current or new assistants to have the final say in how the team does things.
 

Set piece magic

John Solomon (38)
The biggest thing is we need people that just understand how community organisations work. RA obviously still runs at a profit and loss each year, but its objectives are the good of the Rugby Game, not to satisfy monetary shareholders. It's a unique industry that operates on a different plane to for profit businesses. It's still a business but huge swathes of its results are dependent on things like community goodwill.

Our administration has made the mistake of appointing people who don't quite fit the bill for this. In particular, we've had a lot of people from gaming and casino backgrounds, incl both O'Neil and Pulver. These people are professionals that I'm sure are incredibly talented businessmen but their skills are not necessarily analogous to a community org like Rugby.

We need people with experience in channelling community sentiment, in being cheerleaders and understanding how to take advantage of essentially unpaid labour in a goodwill context. Sadly, running a casino is probably the anathema of this. If you ask me, the best run community organisation in the country is actually the NGO 'GetUp'. Obviously it will divide people politically, but it is the best organisation in the country for mobilising hundreds of thousands of unpaid resources to do its bidding (knock on doors etc).

Now imagine if Rugby AU could do the same! GetUp uses a model of paying community organisers professional pay rates, (say 70,000 a year) to recruit people who are unpaid to campaign for the organisation. WE need more thinking like this and less of the Rugby AU status quo.
 

Quick Hands

David Wilson (68)
They interlace though, to a major degree.

The core issue in all the coaching-related discussion we engage in here is not Cheika.

The core issue is that it is evident - and has been for some considerable time - that the ARU/RA have not assembled the competence and experience essential to the task of the selection, development, oversight and general recruitment of professional rugby coaches in this country.

Worst is, they have not even understood the need for it. Accordingly, they have no idea how to perform this crucial strategic task set and they have not been seriously interested in learning how to perform it. In this, our topmost supervisory body has been both deeply complacent and deeply derelict in their duty to the Australian rugby players and public that they are formally bound to serve.

The consequences are everywhere from the conduct and competencies of the Wallaby coaching group, the lack of Australian professional coaching excellence at Super level, the lack of a robust long-term plan (and the resources to support it) to develop amateur level Australian coaches into capable professional grade coaches, and so on.

Appointing a person such as R Kafer - an avowed poor rugby coach for all of a few months and whom possessed zero experience of elite rugby coaching development systems - to head some form of emergency surgery to the problem and vacuum of their own making is evidence enough of the strategic incompetence of the ARU/RA board and its operational management in this mission critical area of code development and sustainment.

Given this history there is no supporting evidence that RA 2018 version will possess the capability to conduct a sound near-term reconstruction of Cheika's coaching group, or even dispense with Cheika and replace him in a sensible, considered manner.

There is just as much likelihood that RA will lurch into some panic-stricken, ersatz choice such as promoting Larkham to Wallaby HC (the RA 'anointed successor' - can you bear it?) or simply in frozen-deer-in-the-headlights mode, do nothing but 'we support Cheika to the hilt'.

The central problems in Australian rugby all are rooted in an incestuous, complacent, arrogant, self-satisfied, elitist culture and MO that has pervasively dominated the appointment of board members and officers to positions of rugby power in this country for at least 10-15 years.

Until this deep-rooted dereliction and ethical deficiency changes radically, the state of the code in Australia will continue its inexorable decline and degradation. As we witness in 2018.

The farcical plans to conduct some sort of telephone interview with Jake White , which was hastily abandoned not because it was a bad idea but because someone in the organisation leaked it to the media is yet another example of management RA style.

A rose by any other name would small as sweet, while the ARU by any other name has the same stench.

Apologies to the Bard.
 

waiopehu oldboy

George Smith (75)
Joe Schmidt is leaving the Ireland job post RWC. So, I have a suggestion. Accept that we're essentially screwed for the RWC. We might not be a complete disaster at best but we won't get past the quarters. Focus on the future and get working on getting Schmidt on board.

He's finishing coaching so expect he'll pop up in a DOR-type role, probably in UK or Ireland so his boy can access the specialised medical care he needs.
 

Quick Hands

David Wilson (68)
I kind of agree with you however decent, respectable and serious journalism must balance the elites leak receipt factor with some capacity to serve readership with objective analysis and reasoned critique re the subject matter of their coverage.

GeoRob principally:

- takes the ARU/RA policy line on just about everything
- routinely comes up with poorly justified 'defences' or 'helpful explanations' of their positions on most matters
- 'soft soaps' M Cheika's appalling 2016-18 record with all manner of excuses and forgivenesses
- discusses the serious problems of the code here as though some kind philosophical inevitability with no identifiable genesis vs the responsibility of those trusted to run it well

In that she's in good company with many other very lazy rugby journalists (and some posters here) in this country. They play an indirect role in aiding the perpetuation of RA's self-excusing, self-justifying toxic culture of denial and poor governance.

A robust, critical, analytically objective sports media plays a serious role in keeping the management of sports' codes honest and open to alternative views of themselves and what they should be doing for the public and players they are meant to serve.

Sort of like a coterie of people we both know.;)
 

Quick Hands

David Wilson (68)
The cancelled call after it was leaked is so ridiculous. It just illustrates how not in control RA are. Getting rid of the coach will help in the short term but what we really need to do is change the people running RA.

Has to be complete cultural change. Swapping the people there with other like minded ones is what we've been doing to the point that incompetence is now systemic.
 

waiopehu oldboy

George Smith (75)
Besides, if he were to coach wouldnt he have a tilt at the All Blacks gig in a few years?

Barring a disastrous RWC Foster will succeed Shag & be succeeded in turn by Razor when he gets bored with winning Super Rugby or its replacement year after year after year :). Unless Schmidt has a major change of heart in the next 12 months I just don't see him ever being an option for HC.
 

Set piece magic

John Solomon (38)
Has to be complete cultural change. Swapping the people there with other like minded ones is what we've been doing to the point that incompetence is now systemic.

All that's waiting to completely destroy RA is a few international management consultants to be bussed in and partition the place into a million pieces like its poland or something
 

Quick Hands

David Wilson (68)
Joe Schmidt is leaving the Ireland job post RWC. So, I have a suggestion. Accept that we're essentially screwed for the RWC. We might not be a complete disaster at best but we won't get past the quarters. Focus on the future and get working on getting Schmidt on board.

After the events of the past few weeks, it's not impossible that Wales and Fiji finish 1st and 2nd in our group.
 
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Dan54

David Wilson (68)
The cancelled call after it was leaked is so ridiculous. It just illustrates how not in control RA are. Getting rid of the coach will help in the short term but what we really need to do is change the people running RA.

Um Joe , apparently White cancelled call. Not RA, so not sure how that makes RA not in control.
 
G

GingerBreadCrab

Guest
The only scenario that this media leak really makes sense in is where Jake White was the one who cancelled the call, and the ARU wanted to get ahead of THAT leak by changing the narrative.
Otherwise, who keeps leaking information from inside the ARU?
 
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