Wallaby Coaching Staff
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Bullrush
John Hipwell (52)
I've quoted this before in regards to Cheika:
"I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself."
It seems to me that lately there is always a bit of niggle in the AB/Wallaby games and it's often the new guys getting into it e.g. Ala'alatoa, Coleman. Mum seems to get into it too.
I think Cheika has shown a lack of discipline on a number of occasions and it rubs off on some of his players. It wouldn't surprise me if the ABs knew this and used it to get players off their game.
"I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself."
It seems to me that lately there is always a bit of niggle in the AB/Wallaby games and it's often the new guys getting into it e.g. Ala'alatoa, Coleman. Mum seems to get into it too.
I think Cheika has shown a lack of discipline on a number of occasions and it rubs off on some of his players. It wouldn't surprise me if the ABs knew this and used it to get players off their game.
Scotty
David Codey (61)
Well I agree with respect to Cheika. Most of the great coaches are certainly much better at controlling themselves - at least in public.
However with respect to the players there is plenty of niggle coming from the likes of Coles, Franks and Retallic so not sure if your logic follows there.
Bullrush
John Hipwell (52)
I was trying to say that I wouldn't be surprised is Coles, Franks etc know that a few of the Wallabies are easily led into that niggle and use it to get them off their game. I don't think you see the same in AB v Bok games.
And the new Wallabies just seem so keen to get into it.
Cheikas team has been riddled with inaccuracy and ill discipline. There were some better patches last Saturday which augurs well for the NH tour - he should have been speaking about that and how some new players did well and Folau was back running etc.. rather than focus on himself and clown cartoons. He seems determined to portray himself as the tough bloke, his team too often has played the bully boy and I think Cheika has mistaked cheap shots, push and shove and niggle for tough,ruthless hard nosed play underpinned by skill and tactical nous - a past hallmark of Australian rugby. His constant off field theatrics only perpetuate this attitude. Unfortunately, the Wallabies trying so hard to be bully boys have been about as menacing as a cloudy day and instead its resulted in ill discipline and I think, lack of focus on their rugby.He should spend less time on all the other crap and spend more time on the details of the game, as far as I can tell his specific coaching (in addition to HC duties) responsibility is the lineout, which has been pants since he took over. They say your attitude is defined by your defence - defence coach Grey has largely escaped criticism this year, however on average for 10 tests we have conceded approx 25 points per test - not a great reflection of a tough team attitude We are always going to be winning 3 from 10 tests against decent opposition if we have to score 26 points a test just to win by a point!
RedsHappy
Tony Shaw (54)
What a really excellent post TWAS.
You'll likely know from my pervious posts on this Wallaby-related topic through 2015 and 2016 that FWIW the vast majority of your analysis has my endorsement.
I would add a couple of additional observations:
Half if not more of the core problem rests with an ARU that has flunked the 'how to build a top-class, fully and properly resourced national coaching group all of a calibre the equal of other leading rugby nations' test for at least a decade if not more.
Just like they have flunked a similar challenge in building an increased depth and quality of rugby coaching skills throughout the whole Australian rugby pyramid in parallel with their quantitative expansion of rugby played via new franchises in WA and VIC, and more recently the NRC. (This crucial gap - an increasing quantity of rugby to gain media income not being matched with increasing quality of rugby being shown to the public - is at the heart of the code's crisis in 2016.)
Given the messy and failed history of (just for example) Deans' support coaches and even before that time, unlike the NZRU the ARU has shown no capability in this area, or even more importantly the initial comprehension regarding how central is the whole calibre of the national coaching group vs the easy mythology that one seemingly marvellous HC will do the trick with a few part-timers in support.
That era of the purely dominant, generalist master is totally over, nowadays mental skills, specialist skills (like the offload under pressure), set pieces, S&C, are all required for the focussed competencies essential in order to map the holistic talent and skills sets required to achieve, or get near, the very best levels of rugby team attainment against the very best competition.
Just the facts that it's taken years to belatedly recognise how critical an M Byrne-type of coach is to the national squad, that today we have no national forwards and line out coach, that we have no elite mental skills coaching (and not by contrast the major, long-term investment the NZRU has put into that key area of player development via Gilbert Enoka and others), no S&C Super and national program that's at least up there with NZ's, all this points the same way.
Either we don't understand at all, or we are 'saving' money in totally the wrong places (or both). If the Wallabies die away as a source of big crowd-pulling national pride - and let's face it Test crowd levels show that is what is slowly but inexorably occurring - the code will risk collapse in this country as its national income falls to non-viable levels.
Then we have the ridiculous notion that top national support coaches like Larkham and Grey can be part-time and happily zip back to Super positions for January-June/July. This is madness, the core national coaching group should be full-time and dedicating themselves 11 months a year to the task of rebuilding the Wallabies. Let alone the conflicts of interest and focus that wearing both Super and national hats can create, or be seen to create.
Consider all the above and then look carefully at the implied skills and background preferences of the ARU's board appointments in recent years. It's all ex-Wallabies, 'big' businessmen and women, corporate lawyers and such like. All 'good rugby people' no doubt who enjoy the VIP boxes and prestige networking but totally lacking in experience in, say, elite sports management, athletic and elite team performance skills, coaching technique and capability and so forth. Essentially, it's a board of enthusiastic amateurs wondering aimlessly why the Wallabies and our Super teams are in strife. How would this board begin to appreciate what building a genuine high performance national sports capability is really all about?
The above status has all come from years of corrosive complacency and implicit arrogance that the GPS schools would always be the undying factory for a Wallaby system fuelled by naturally gifted athletes needing only limited professional support and coaching.
Unfortunately, Cheika, unmentored and unguided by a relatively clueless ARU, has shown little interest in building a really first class and complete national coaching team ready to, in capability terms, rival that England has now created and the NZRU has created over the last decade or longer. I predict that this quiet dereliction could well yet prove the core of his undoing (or will severely cap his own potential as HC) and is the present key to his terrible 2016 30% (so far) w-l% ratio.
How on earth do we think with our national coaching MO as it is today that we may credibly and consistently defeat an England now staffed with a bevy of wide-span specialist coaches and with EJ (Eddie Jones) wisely bringing in more part-time for detailed advice (as he did here in Australia) and further get up near the ABs (whereby the NZRU has shown it fully understands the quality and quantity of a national full-time coaching team able to deliver 80%+ w-l ration year after year)? Do we think the NZRU invested in the Byrne's and Enoka's out of a desire to fill the team bus up; fuck no, they came to appreciate the depth and variety of skills essential to gaining sustainable peak player and team performance.
Perhaps the most enlightening moment in Chasing Great is when McCaw reached out to a forensic psychiatrist no less when he knew he needed to manage the mental aspects of big game pressure and get better mind control than he possessed during the RWC 2007 QF.
The attention to detail, the willingness to use highly specialist advice and listen to it, the support from his superiors to do this and to have the humility to open up oneself that way and then use that advice, these are the hallmarks of the best of the best in modern sporting skills and player development. And by best of the best, I purposefully mean both in terms of individuals and their surrounding and supporting institutions.
This type of depth and a relentlessly analytic, improvement-driven elite culture is mirrored in many modern Australian sporting organisations; indeed, vis the AIS et al we pioneered a huge amount of applied modern sport science, so much so and so well that the world copied us. To this deep vein of national quality in sports skills professionalism and ambition through earned insight, our modern rugby system is the self-omitting exception and now, as was inevitable, the chickens are fast coming home.
T
Tip
Guest
I do agree with you RedsHappy, I think I've been saying for a decade now here (and on GoTheTahs prior) that it's an outrage that the ARU haven't hired a full-time Kicking coach for the Wallabies. Why we haven't got the best kicking game in the world is beyond me, we've got more out-of-hand kicking knowledge than the rest of the world combined!
It's a double edged sword as one must be wary of what "outside specialists" can do to your sport in higher positions. (Pat Howard, Cricket Australia)
However, with regards to Grey & Larkham, surely the buck stops at HC.
These pages are at risk of sounding like the Queensland Reds board circa 2014-16.
"Let's just provide him with the appropriate amount of support and everything will be fine we promise"
TWAS, I'm very hesitant to blame Larkham for the 2.2 tries per game because that should lay at the feet of the only playmaker that has played every single minute of test rugby this year, and the coach who'll never hook him.
You know things are getting really, really, really, really bad when the conversation veers towards a "Coaching panel" or "Selectors board", indicating a complete lack of faith in the HC and the team he selects.
Disclaimer: I'm not advocating for a new coach, just for Chieka to pull his head out of the sand.
It's a double edged sword as one must be wary of what "outside specialists" can do to your sport in higher positions. (Pat Howard, Cricket Australia)
However, with regards to Grey & Larkham, surely the buck stops at HC.
These pages are at risk of sounding like the Queensland Reds board circa 2014-16.
"Let's just provide him with the appropriate amount of support and everything will be fine we promise"
TWAS, I'm very hesitant to blame Larkham for the 2.2 tries per game because that should lay at the feet of the only playmaker that has played every single minute of test rugby this year, and the coach who'll never hook him.
You know things are getting really, really, really, really bad when the conversation veers towards a "Coaching panel" or "Selectors board", indicating a complete lack of faith in the HC and the team he selects.
Disclaimer: I'm not advocating for a new coach, just for Chieka to pull his head out of the sand.
Gnostic
Mark Ella (57)
^^^^^^ Redshappy has been talking about this for years, and if you doubt it have a look at some posts before the 2011 RWC where just these aspects of coaching are discussed with regard to the Deans coaching group. A pity few have really been listening up until now when it is so totally apparent and undeniable.
It is disheartening to know that a generation of very gifted players (and some potentially very good coaches) have never really achieved what they could of because the systems to support truly high performance were not in place when they realistically could have been.
As I see it Cheika is a fatally flawed as things stand now in terms of a near arrogance in thinking a HC can promote that High Performance necessary across all areas.
He has a genuine scrum coach who has achieved very good results considering the very low base he entered the system with.
Grey is a good defence coach as evidenced by the system the Wallabies employed at the Tahs in the 2013-2014 and the Rebels prior to that, though this year the system has been very poor, in part I think to the what I regard crazy selection policies trying to do just what Deans did and get all the "best" players on the park at once and neglecting the skills balance across the side. There is enough evidence that given the balance of skills across the park the defence could be very good.
Larkham has proved zero as an attack coach. The attack at the Brumbies since White left has been pretty abysmal and the attack of the Wallabies this year even more so. Given the territory and possession stats that the Wallabies have managed in so many of the tests this year that should be plainly obvious and there is no reason at all to retain his services at Wallaby until he can actually coach a team to attack at a lower level.
S&C - the Wallabies have fallen apart in the last quarter of more than a few games. What ever they have been doing is not standing them in good stead.
Mind - the problem plagued captaincy of Moore has improved, and the last game was clearly the best in terms of team attitude with the Wallabies not going too overboard with the niggle though it remains very obvious they are an extremely frustrated and angry side IMO.
Skills - years too late M.Byrne has been brought in. It may well be 3 or 4 years before we truly start to see the results of his work.
There is no forwards coach to assist with the Lineouts and technicalities of the breakdown - and if MC is doing that himself he hasn't been successful overall. Though again I'd say the constant selection rotation and inbalance in selection feed into this.
It is disheartening to know that a generation of very gifted players (and some potentially very good coaches) have never really achieved what they could of because the systems to support truly high performance were not in place when they realistically could have been.
As I see it Cheika is a fatally flawed as things stand now in terms of a near arrogance in thinking a HC can promote that High Performance necessary across all areas.
He has a genuine scrum coach who has achieved very good results considering the very low base he entered the system with.
Grey is a good defence coach as evidenced by the system the Wallabies employed at the Tahs in the 2013-2014 and the Rebels prior to that, though this year the system has been very poor, in part I think to the what I regard crazy selection policies trying to do just what Deans did and get all the "best" players on the park at once and neglecting the skills balance across the side. There is enough evidence that given the balance of skills across the park the defence could be very good.
Larkham has proved zero as an attack coach. The attack at the Brumbies since White left has been pretty abysmal and the attack of the Wallabies this year even more so. Given the territory and possession stats that the Wallabies have managed in so many of the tests this year that should be plainly obvious and there is no reason at all to retain his services at Wallaby until he can actually coach a team to attack at a lower level.
S&C - the Wallabies have fallen apart in the last quarter of more than a few games. What ever they have been doing is not standing them in good stead.
Mind - the problem plagued captaincy of Moore has improved, and the last game was clearly the best in terms of team attitude with the Wallabies not going too overboard with the niggle though it remains very obvious they are an extremely frustrated and angry side IMO.
Skills - years too late M.Byrne has been brought in. It may well be 3 or 4 years before we truly start to see the results of his work.
There is no forwards coach to assist with the Lineouts and technicalities of the breakdown - and if MC is doing that himself he hasn't been successful overall. Though again I'd say the constant selection rotation and inbalance in selection feed into this.
T
Train Without a Station
Guest
We have to consider reality.
It's hard to have good mentors when you lack the successful past coaches to be good mentors. There was no real opportunities for transition plans the past two coaching changes and as we saw from the Reds, they don't necessarily work.
With regards to a kicking coach, wasn't Chris Malone employed in that role around the time when Foley was seeing some of his worst results?
Sometimes people just don't work out. It's not like there is an abundance of well credentialed kicking coaches floating around and we are just ignoring them. It's a niche role.
Gnostic, I have to dispute your summation of Grey. The Rebels let in over 500 points each season he coached there. They saw more improvement in that aspect after he left, whilst he hardly had an immediate improvement at the Waratahs either. In his first season they were 10th for points conceded.
He has a good period 2014-2015 to point to, but otherwise not a lot of runs on the board as a defence coach really.
Tip, in regards to the Assistants. Well if they aren't happy with the team they get and aren't able to justify why it's not the best team and what it lacks, then maybe they aren't the right people. I highly doubt Cheika has his attachment to players (which all coaches do) to the point that he ignores valid input from assistants and just says X player has to be selected despite their protests.
It's hard to have good mentors when you lack the successful past coaches to be good mentors. There was no real opportunities for transition plans the past two coaching changes and as we saw from the Reds, they don't necessarily work.
With regards to a kicking coach, wasn't Chris Malone employed in that role around the time when Foley was seeing some of his worst results?
Sometimes people just don't work out. It's not like there is an abundance of well credentialed kicking coaches floating around and we are just ignoring them. It's a niche role.
Gnostic, I have to dispute your summation of Grey. The Rebels let in over 500 points each season he coached there. They saw more improvement in that aspect after he left, whilst he hardly had an immediate improvement at the Waratahs either. In his first season they were 10th for points conceded.
He has a good period 2014-2015 to point to, but otherwise not a lot of runs on the board as a defence coach really.
Tip, in regards to the Assistants. Well if they aren't happy with the team they get and aren't able to justify why it's not the best team and what it lacks, then maybe they aren't the right people. I highly doubt Cheika has his attachment to players (which all coaches do) to the point that he ignores valid input from assistants and just says X player has to be selected despite their protests.
Viking
Mark Ella (57)
Scotty
David Codey (61)
Sneaky eye massage?
girtbysea
Ted Fahey (11)
80 minute fitness is still an issue. Watch the passage of play when Mumm intercepts. It is Coles who gets him from behind, forces the turnover, is at the next sequences of breakdowns and ultimately is in place to take the short pass to score at the other end. If you watch Mumm, he does not after the turnover join any of the breakdowns or effect a tackle or be in an on side position. He is still working his way back from offside when Coles scores.
Brumby Runner
David Wilson (68)
^^^^^^^ that was a special sequence of play by Coles - the best No 2 going round in world rugby. In any one game, Coles will display No 2, No 7, No 12 and wing skills on numerous occasions. However, the contrast in intensity and skills you point out between Coles and Mumm is very telling.
Viking
Mark Ella (57)
Maybe fitness isn't the issue, more-so the efficiency of NZ in their attack and defence and the lack of efficiency in our game-plan.
Example: 20+ phases on England's goal line without coming away with points. I think it was Mick Bryne who said he was harder to attack on the goal-line then defend as you have to keep hitting rucks and re-setting 5-10m back.
NZ are so good at getting into the right positions it almost seems seamless. They don't often go through that many phases without making considerable ground or scoring points
Example: 20+ phases on England's goal line without coming away with points. I think it was Mick Bryne who said he was harder to attack on the goal-line then defend as you have to keep hitting rucks and re-setting 5-10m back.
NZ are so good at getting into the right positions it almost seems seamless. They don't often go through that many phases without making considerable ground or scoring points
Strewthcobber
Mark Ella (57)
Agree with this
Coles only had to hit 20 rucks all game - while Dean Mumm hit 36 (Cole didn't quite play the 80, but the point remains)
The Wallabies had to hit 30% more rucks overall (265 v 201). They were working harder, and achieving less.
Scrubber2050
Mark Ella (57)
I genuinely think we have potentially a very good squad of players
Sure there are plenty of aspects to work on, not the least being skills.
But what I fail to see over the past few years is "passion" , that word so often bandied about. Of course everyone is proud to wear the jersey but it's a lot more than that.
To me and not being tribal l in any way whatsoever the best example I can think of is the way the Maroons played in the early State of Origin matches. Selectors would pick some random like Rohan Hancock from the Toowoomba competition, he would don the jersey and become a fucking giant killer.
How you replicate that I don't know but it's the sort of mentality we need to display.
Sure there are plenty of aspects to work on, not the least being skills.
But what I fail to see over the past few years is "passion" , that word so often bandied about. Of course everyone is proud to wear the jersey but it's a lot more than that.
To me and not being tribal l in any way whatsoever the best example I can think of is the way the Maroons played in the early State of Origin matches. Selectors would pick some random like Rohan Hancock from the Toowoomba competition, he would don the jersey and become a fucking giant killer.
How you replicate that I don't know but it's the sort of mentality we need to display.
Strewthcobber
Mark Ella (57)
Can you really expect passion when you play 15 games a year?
This is a job for these guys after all
And I'm trying to work out how best to put this - but how many of our players grew up dreaming of playing for the Wallabies?
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