Did Wallabies' 2011 EOYT hurt Aus Conf 2012 S15?

[Bowside]

I think there are 1 or 2 too many international games played each season. I understand they are a big revenue raiser - but at some point enough is enough.

For example - why are we playing scotland on a tuesday when we have a test against wales the following saturday. It increases an already heavy workload for players and serves to devalue the wallaby jersey by necessitating the selection of a second string team.

Furthermore why do we play so many games on end of year tours - why not just 4 games v home nations or 4 games v frace, italy, england and one other.

In my mind Aus rugby's biggest problem is that our top players play too much high quality rugby while all our other players don't play nearly enough.

 

[qwerty51]

Can someone confirm but are Scotland only coming out here for this one match??

 

[Dan54]

I agree that it is impacting on players, even if mentally as much as physically. I remember talking to Grant Fox at a function in Brisbane a couple of years back, where he said the general feeling was that playing a test was was roughly the same as running a marathon , physically and mentally, and although you can run a number of marathons a year, no one runs good times more than 3-4 times a year. He wasn't saying this all they can play, but he did seem to think it resulted in players not always being on top of their game, and I think some of these S15 games get close to test match intensity, so you would think there would be some player burnout.

 

[Bardon]

Can someone confirm but are Scotland only coming out here for this one match??

Their summer tour is Australia, Samoa and Fiji.

 

[fatprop]

Wallabies will get better as Super Season progresses, says Larkham


By AAP, 4 Apr 2012

Brumbies assistant coach Stephen Larkham doesn’t subscribe to the theory that the Wallabies’ heavy touring schedule last year has weighed down Australian Super Rugby teams in 2012.
Former selector Tim Horan declared this week the packed itinerary of late 2011 had put almost all the Wallabies out of sorts this season, bar Waratahs utility back Adam Ashley-Cooper and Western Force skipper David Pocock.
But while Larkham agreed it had had an impact, he denied it was responsible for Australia’s flagging fortunes in the Super Rugby competition.
Based on points alone, six rounds into the season, Australia’s best-placed team was the Brumbies in sixth spot, also the only local team to be able to boast a positive (3-2) win record.
“No, they’re a fairly young Wallabies side anyway and, if you look at the competition between Wallabies and non-Wallabies, all the guys seem to be on a fairly even playing level,” Larkham told AAP on Tuesday.
“But at the same time, you’ve got to accommodate the World Cup and how stressful that is to body and mind.
“They can’t just come back and hit their straps in the first even five rounds of the competition.
“But as it goes on, I think we’ll see those guys improve.”
The Brumbies legend used hooker Stephen Moore – one of three Wallabies in the Brumbies’ squad along with Ben Alexander and Pat McCabe – as a prime example, saying he had demonstrated progressive improvement week by week.
“He’s certainly in better physical condition now than when he first started the competition and you can see that in his performance … he’s getting around the field a lot better,” Larkham said.
“All our three guys came into camp a little bit later and they were probably unconditioned compared to everyone else.
“But all the other teams will be going through the same problems.”

 

[RedsHappy]

Link is quietly conceding that a number of Reds players have been impacted - at least to some degree - by the very long playing season they had in 2011. This quote is from an April 8, 2012 interview he did with B Cannon for The Herald Sun:

Q: You have had your share of injuries ... but your bigger-name players are not showing the mojo they had last year. Is that a concern?

A: I tend to look across and sort of say, 'Is this a problem that affects us specifically?' We had the highest proportion of players in the World Cup and in the end-of-season tour, some of those guys are injured and some of them are out there battling away week in and week out.

I think our senior players are doing their best, but they had a long year. Everyone cycles around the World Cup, that was a big milestone in their careers, and then they kept going after that on tour.

Most other countries stopped and had three months off, Australia kept going ... we've been trying to manage the workload but we've been hampered a bit by the injury toll. We've got nine backs out, so Will Genia has just had to keep fronting up.

 

[Gnostic]

Another nail for the coffin that should be getting prepared for JONs idea of 32 contracted players.