How to fix the wallabies

[dru]

I think Cheika is the right choice of coach.

Agree. It would leave us in a much bigger hole to see Cheika follow Link with another unexpected "exit stage left".

 

[wamberal]

I think Cheika is the right choice of coach.

I think HIS selection of Assistants was poor or at least NOW shown to be poor. Mick Byrne is a fine choice but probably an ARU thing.

Larkham really hasn't hot his area humming away. Neither has Mario Whoever.

Cheika obviously understood that there is absolutely no future in having a national coaching set-up which is at odds with the Soup coaches. He invited Foley to be involved as well as Larkham. It is not Cheika's fault that Larkham appears to have under-performed, or that Foley knocked the offer back.

It would be interesting to know what the budget is for national coaching, and how much pressure is on Cheika to rein in costs.

Mario Ledesma is a widely respected scrumming coach, and our scrum is a helluva lot better than it was. Benn Robinson has done no coaching, AFAIK.


It beggars belief that Byrne would have been approached for the job without Cheika's total support. Similarly, there is no way that a coach of his standing would accept his position without talking with Cheika first and knowing that they could work together. One of the first tasks he is taking on is to coordinate with the Soup coaches to ensure that all levels of our game are singing from the same songbook, thus continuing Cheika's initiatives.

 

[Aussie D]

I posted on here back when the site started that the ARU needed to develop a second pathway to the Wallabies, not just rely on the private school one. Unfortunately they didn't and with changing demographics the private school production line is starting to falter. With money running low it is now inherently more difficult to get the second, club-based pathway up to speed.

Redshappy (At least I think it was him), was right when he mentioned Link leaving to go overseas. How much time and investment from Australian rugby was allowed to walk out the door as he was perceived to be a 'failed' national coach, same with Eddie Jones. Could you imagine either one of those tasked with the position of National Director of Coaching with the remit to improve coaching at all levels below the Wallabies and having them around for Cheika to come to for advice when transitioning from Super Rugby coach to Wallaby coach? The ARU would do well to keep Foley involved with Oz rugby as a scrum and lineout guru.

 

[wamberal]

Do you really think that Link would have wanted to continue in coaching here after being totally humiliated? I don"t.


Eddie single-handedly destroyed the Reds in his last season here. Good on him for re-inventing himself, but would you have recruited him after the Reds debacle?

The ARU tried to develop a pathway, namely the ARC. This was sabotaged by some of the clubs. The NRC is a pathway.


Does our sport have the money to develop other new pathways? No.

 

[barbarian]

Your right Aussie D about Link, and I think it sums up why the current predicament is so difficult.

The team was as listless as I've ever seen it on Saturday. So you want to point fingers at coaches, players, administrators.

But I just saw the World Cup! I fucking know these guys can do it! I saw Ledesma turn our scrum into a weapon, I saw Bernie Larkham draw great work from Bernard Foley and I saw Nathan Grey orchestrate a defensive performance that saw us hold out Wales with 13 men.

That's what makes this so weird for me. These coaches haven't all of a sudden turned into failures.

It's similar to Link - a few bad months doesn't turn him into a bad coach. The results he achieved with Queensland were astounding, akin to what Cheika did at the Tahs.

This game is so fickle, so infuriating sometimes. I'm not sure you can 'fix' this, or find lessons in it. Eventually we will start winning games again, sure. But it's the last few months have been totally perplexing.
.

 

[The torpedo]

No. That will not suffice. The problems of Australian rugby we see so clearly today are at root embedded within the whole of the current Australian rugby's institutional system and generally poor leadership, the whole system and its self-indulgent and insufficiently competent leadership is deficient and the only truly useful change will come from its comprehensive replacement.

What I believe is now the likely scenario that will do the job is something like this:

- first up, nothing ever changes in Australian rugby without a very serious, visible crisis, near or actual bakruptcy, truly disatrous outcomes and such like. We do not have a self-repairing institutional system, if we did, we would not be where we are today

- IMO it's likely the really serious financial and commercial crisis will come for the ARU in roughly the 2018-20 period when (a) too many State RUs have large, parallel financial and commercial crises that are simply unaffordable to fix with the then-depleted ARU cash balances and (b) Wallaby and national sponsorship incomes have fallen more than SANZAR TV rights can compensate for and when (c) (a) and (b) coalesce forcing the ARU into actual or prospective bankruptcy

- World Rugby, SANZAR and the NZRU will not want to see Australian rugby collapse and die, so they will together mount a considered rescue package to preserve some form of Australian rugby

- this package will of political and strategic necessity require a total purgation of the ARU board and a radical centralisation of all Australian rugby operations with attendant cost savings and (at long last) more competent personnel installed in key positions both in HQ and in the State RUs. These changes will be all non-negotiable and forced in

- the Force and Rebels will almost certainly be shut down on affordability and strategic viability grounds, the NRC will be merged with the grassroots clubs in some fashion

- only then, in this period, with these actions and consequences, will Australian rugby have a chance for the radical rebirthing it so clearly needs along with the arrival of superior leadership and governance capabilities

- whatever hastens the above crises and processes will ultimately be for the betterment of Australian rugby; slow and limited incremental tinkering at the margins of what we have now will only delay the inevitable and lead to more pain later.

So TL;DR: the ARU has to go through what the QRU and reds went through in 2009 to become good again?

 

[Gnostic]

It is pretty clear that Larkham had little to do with the attack last year. The attack of the Wallabies at the RWC was pretty similar to what it had been before his arrival.

This year they have moved on from that, which is as it should be, we do not have a complete game to remain static with. They have to develop and as the Tahs showed in Super Rugby when you win by being very very good at a narrow game plan it is easy to come up with a strategy to beat it.

Problem is the Wallabies obviously adopted Larkham's "attack" plan from the Brumbies which is beyond poor. Given how the Wallabies are structured in attack this impacts greatly on how they are able to react to break outs. For me this is what killed them against England, that and the fact that even with DHP in the back three he was never positioned for an exit strategy, and the same happened again on Saturday.

The Brumbies might have topped the Australian Conference but they were perhaps lucky to do even that. Larkham on two years of Brumbies results is not a Super Level coach let alone a test level backs/attack coach.

Grey on the other hand has a lot of runs on the board and some big questions have to be asked about the structures being used this year, even though as I said transition from attack to defence is difficult with the system they have been using, there are also massive failures from usually reliable players, but again this situation was foreshadowed in Super Rugby.

 

[The torpedo]

The ARU tried to develop a pathway, namely the ARC. This was sabotaged by some of the clubs. The NRC is a pathway.

How was the ARC sabotaged by some of the clubs? I only started following rugby that year

 

[Highlander35]

How was the ARC sabotaged by some of the clubs? I only started following rugby that year

To an even bigger extent than now, NSW was a mess.

All the clubs were forced into allegiances (4 Northern Clubs into the Rays, 4 Western Clubs into the Rams and the other 4 into the Fleet) some of which, particularly the fleet, had very little in common geographically or culturally. In addition, the Northern Side played out of Gosford, and the fleet (the eastern/Southern/inner city) out of North Sydney Oval.

Clusterfuck. Add on the expense of paying the ABC to broadcast the games, and it's understandable why they canned it, even given it was the incorrect decision in the hindsight. In particular, you'd think the Force would be even further ahead with development of home grown talent, and the Rebels hopefully wouldn't have taken this amount of time to develop and utilise the local talent.

 

[boey]

First step is put folau at outside.

Next bring in hanson to replace moore.

quade needs to get picked to provide australia with that x factor in attack

i reckon AAC (Adam Ashley-Cooper) should be a good option at inside now to fill the hole left by gits and To'omua. the back row needs to be reshuffled

hooper should be dropped for mcmahon and fardy brought in for mcalman

also bring back ewen

 

[Gnostic]

How was the ARC sabotaged by some of the clubs? I only started following rugby that year

Its become a self perpetuating myth because some clubs didn't see any value in it and opted not to be involved. Apparently not being involved in something of questionable value means you are sabotaging it.

Edit the NRC that is.

The ARC didn't need anybody to sabotage it, it was a lead balloon from the start, poorly planned and in-funded.

 

[mst]

Agree. It would leave us in a much bigger hole to see Cheika follow Link with another unexpected "exit stage left".

Especially to the bank balance paying out the contract which is probably a a major factor in any decision.

I am not sure the hole would be that big TBH if he went. The timing and circumstances are very different.

 

[mst]

Replace Larkham with McKay
Replace Grey with Taylor
Fisher/Foley as forwards coach (Ledesma as set-piece coach)
Byrne as skills coach
Jonny Wilkinson as kicking coach
Also bring in Dean Benton as S & C coach (or whoever was the Tahs S & C coach in 2014)
Ben Perkins as psychologist

So, overall coaching staff:

Head coach: Michael Cheika
Attack coach: Jim McKay
Defence coach: Matt Taylor
Forwards coach: Laurie Fisher/Michael Foley
Set-piece coach: Mario Ledesma
Skills coach: Mick Byrne
Kicking coach: Jonny Wilkinson
S & C coach: Dean Benton/Tahs 2014 S & C coach
Psychologist: Ben Perkins

What do you think about that coaching staff RH?

Enough to clearly say that our players are of such a low standard needing that much coaching at the Wallaby level we should drop to a tier 2 nation.

The reality is they spend more time with their Super Rugby clubs, so Wallabies coaching is really of limited value in the time they have in camp.

 

[mst]

Mario Ledesma is a widely respected scrumming coach, .

Was - past tense. Once he was sacked on one wanted him in Europe or in the NH. The convenient drop in to his mate while job hunting in the SH, all the while waiting to see if the Puma's would offer him anything. which they didn't, led him to where he is.

 

[Teh Other Dave]

Eddie single-handedly destroyed the Reds in his last season here. Good on him for re-inventing himself, but would you have recruited him after the Reds debacle?

Eddie had inherited a dog's breakfast that was the culmination of seasons of poor management on and off the field. Funnily enough, that's similar to what Link wandered into at the ARU.

 

[Strewthcobber]

Enough to clearly say that our players are of such a low standard needing that much coaching at the Wallaby level we should drop to a tier 2 nation.

The reality is they spend more time with their Super Rugby clubs, so Wallabies coaching is really of limited value in the time they have in camp.

Theyre with the Wallabies for June, August, September, October and November, with a couple of camps earlier in the year.

Add in the offseason and its really not that much of a difference once you:re in the squad.

Eg Izzy will have played 60 games of Super Rugby and 50 test matches by the end of the year

 

[Aussie D]

The ARU tried to develop a pathway, namely the ARC. This was sabotaged by some of the clubs. The NRC is a pathway.

I was talking mainly about junior pathways which is why I mentioned private schools (not having a go at them) and clubs. If we can improve the second pathway we should get more players coming through (which will help clubs at all levels) and with a larger base hopefully more players of quality.

 

[KOB1987]

I think that the Wallabies can only be 'fixed' to a certain amount under the current circumstances. A lot of it comes to managing peoples' expectations as has been mentioned numerous times before. It's not just rugby, have a look at cricket and the glaring example now is the Olympics.

There was a golden era in Australian sport from the mid 90s to the mid noughties when we were punching well above our weight as a nation. It's no coincidence that this period spans the year 2000 when we hosted the Olympics. Too many people expect this to be the norm.

We should always aspire to be number 1 in the world for rugby and there will come a time when we are. Somewhere between #2 and #5 is where we are going to be more often than not.

But to optimise our potential going forward, yes we have to stop recalling past it players from Europe (except under the odd exceptional circumstance), blood the younger promising players into the squad, and invest at the grassroots level. I think that Pulver's quest to get rugby into the public schools system is a good initiative, whether it gains any traction remains to be seen.

 

[mst]

Theyre with the Wallabies for June, August, September, October and November, with a couple of camps earlier in the year.

Add in the offseason and its really not that much of a difference once you:re in the squad.

Eg Izzy will have played 60 games of Super Rugby and 50 test matches by the end of the year

What are the 50 games?. What about travel time and home time they get with the Wallabies? It is still less time than Super Rugby.

 

[Viking]

I think that the Wallabies can only be 'fixed' to a certain amount under the current circumstances. A lot of it comes to managing peoples' expectations as has been mentioned numerous times before. It's not just rugby, have a look at cricket and the glaring example now is the Olympics.

There was a golden era in Australian sport from the mid 90s to the mid noughties when we were punching well above our weight as a nation. It's no coincidence that this period spans the year 2000 when we hosted the Olympics. Too many people expect this to be the norm.

I keep hearing this "we need to manage our expectations". I don't agree. I dont think our expectations on this forum are that high.

I think most posters here would be happy with a performance of say our NZ v Aus match in 2013 Dunedin - you know the game where Cooper had a blinder.

We still lost, but the forums weren't exactly lighting up afterward, we had a good crack and it was great footy to watch. 99% of us were happy with that effort. If NZ made a few uncharacteristic errors we have a chance to scrap through a win.

That is my expectations. Given the difference in depth of players and general skill of NZ and Aus they should still beat us the majority of time but not by bloody 40 points.

That game in 2013 should be the norm and I don't think its unreasonable to think it can be.

A 3-nil whitewash to England at home followed up by a record loss at home is something well below anyones expectations. I was expecting a 2-1 loss to England, and the normal 10 point loss to NZ - not that I would be happy with that but our current crop is even well below that standard.