The youth of today
The Australian rugby coach and his selectors appear to be following a quite deliberate policy of favouring emerging players over those with significant international playing experience. One consequence of this is that the Australian Super 14 franchises are being denuded of senior players who traditionally mentor and guide those who are just learning their craft.
In the Test against Ireland, the Wallabies do not have a single player aged 30 or more in their starting fifteen. Their opponents have eight, a majority of the team! The average age of our 22-man squad is 25.2 years; theirs is 27.5. Our oldest starter is 28.
Consider the average age of the most recent teams of the top ten rugby countries, i.e., Tri-Nations, Six Nations plus Argentina. Every other side’s players are more than a year older than the Wallabies. And every other country has two or more starting players who are at least 30 years old.
Rugby is an unusually complex game. It takes players years to achieve real competency. And yet we are seeing a new generation of talented youngsters rushed from school into professional football and then on to the international level. A minority manage to establish themselves at the top, but I wonder whether even they achieve their full potential. In their development years they should be playing in an environment where they can dominate instead of one where they constantly struggle to survive.
Because of the centralised control of the sport by the ARU, the premature discarding of experienced players has extremely adverse impacts at the Super 14 levels and even down through the clubs. The central body dictates how much players can be paid by the franchises who are basically mendicants surviving on handouts from the centre. It is therefore only those players who are on ARU contracts who earn large incomes. Once taken off the national list players have little choice but to round out their careers in Europe or in the Bermuda Triangle of Japanese rugby.
The effect of this is that all their accumulated wisdom and experience is lost to their Super 14 teams and their clubs; basically to Australian rugby. And then people say that we don’t have a large enough talent pool in Australia. The main way in which the great minds who control our sport have dealt with this problem is to buy in so-called rugby league marquee players who then spend years trying to master the fundamentals of our sport. How can young players benefit by playing with extravagantly paid blow-ins who know vastly less than they do?
It has been observed that rugby is basically war without the guns. When you’re forced to slog it out in the trenches, who would you want with you? A grizzled battle-scarred veteran or an over-excited kid who believes all the hype and publicity generated about him. Small wonder that we can’t string wins together.
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Damn right. Plus this joke about pilfering toyota cup league players is a joke. As a 17 year old rugby player,i Think this is bullshit. Whats that about strengthening our code, Johnny Boy?
ps. robbie pick some country public school boys.
Totally agree Bruce. Some people think there is something unusual about Australia which means we have to pick youngsters. Rubbish. Doesn’t matter what size or talent your player pool, there’s no rational reason for the current youth fetish.
An affliction picked up from the NZRU….
Problem is that we don’t have a bunch of Battle-scarred veterans at our disposal.
The only fit player that Dingo left at home was Al Baxter.
I think this recent youth policy has been a drive to accelerate our depth. It will need to continue now with Melbourne.
I’m not sure we have many other choices?
“The only fit player that Dingo left at home was Al Baxter.” And he was injured, unavailable for selection.
Dingo has come to the inevitable conclusion the current crew of old codgers aren’t up to it.
In their development years they should be playing in an environment where they can dominate instead of one where they constantly struggle to survive.
Do you really think this is true? If they are dominating one level, shouldn’t they make the step up?
I agree with the point about losing the older guys to S14, to a degree at least. But it doesn’t really mean squat for our Wallaby selection process, surely?
After all, Genia is younger than some other halfbacks running around!
Also, i was pretty happy when the Wallabies walked out at Twickenham on average younger, but also with more caps than the poms.
Who says you cant have both?
I can’t really say I agree, who would we have in place of the players around. The only people we have lost in the Dean era are Gerard 27 and McMeniman 26. Lote is lost to us, Mortlock is injured, Baxter is always penalised
Also one of the reason we have a youth policy is because older players were seen to be part of a loosing culture. Do you really want young player learn from guys like that?
I love Mortlock as a player and hated him as a captain, everytime we lost he didn’t seem to care. Now we have Elsom a man with a far more serious demenor, he doesn’t even seem that happy when we win, which is the way it should be at the moment cause we have a long way to go.
If you ask me I think it is the right move, get rid of the dead weight bring on youth and in 2 years time they won’t look so young and fresh!
Really, who have we lost? Deans manta is “your good enough, you’re old enough”, the way it should be.
Baxter hasn’t been up to it for years. Waugh is good but not the best option, Tuqiri was past it and overpaid…..so what is the gripe about. We’re rebuilding and will be good in a few years (and we’re still no.3).
In reality we could fourth after this weekend. But you right time was right to move on even if the next best option is 19
when it comes down to the last ten minute sof a game and the game could go either way, having waugh on the field is the best option in australian rugby at the moment hands down, he aint going to flap his arms around to look busy like pocock, he is going to get us going forward and winning games, thats why you need veterens and thats why waugh is light years ahead of pocock!
Rugby in Oz has been relying on old stagers for years. When they all had to finally move on there was a massive gap to fill. The current youth policy is absolutely the only way to go in these circumstances.
This is all so wrong. Retaining older players takes up limited space at Super 14 level for younger players to get game time. Paying older players from a limited budget exposes our younger to more commercial pressure from overseas clubs, because we will have to pay them less. The ARU is in a hard place, and have decided a youth policy is the best way to balance the competind demands of development and cashflow. I for one think they are right. It is Growden-esque puffery to say in the middle of a necessary rebuilding phase, that we are developing too much youth.
I think it’s dangerous to pick an international team on anything but form but I don’t think Deans is to blame. I’ve always thought with the wallabies that once you’re in you get looked at before players trying to crack the squad. You want to have a highly competitive atmosphere but one where at least players think that they will get rewarded for good club play. I think historically we have had a team similar to our cricket team, they don’t like to mess with it unless someone is injured. I guess Gerrard was the big casualty of the Deans era but I always felt sorry for players Pre Deans that never got a go, Peter Hewatt for example. Any other great players you can think of that didn’t get ever get a run?
The Aussie cricket team only implemented that policy in its decline. When it was becoming a great team, and in its pomp, selection was ferociously competitive.
Put the assertions made in the article into the context that all Australian sports, with the exception of cricket in very recent times, have always had younger teams than other nations.
How many of the Wallaby teams that won the RWC in 1991 and 1999 were 30 and +? Not many.
You know, El Dommo alluded to it the other day in the Tom Court post. It’s about guys not having to serve their apprenticeship any more. That’s because they’re ‘identified’ early and off they go to the academy and fast tracked to Super rugby.
And what happens to the experienced blokes. Frequently they’re off to some obscure club overseas where they earn a few bucks in a competition where they don’t have to perform quite up to Super 14 standard. Or, they are never picked at that level as there are only a limited number of vacancies available.
You can’t blame Robbie for trying to stamp his authority on the Wallabies and select his ‘own’ team. Trouble is, there’s a significant gap in depth missing, like an NPC competition to develop and nurture young guys to become experienced blokes.
We need a 2nd tier competition to retain ‘old fellas’ and develop ‘young guns’. That’s the answer. It’s all about balance.
The clearest example I can think of of the short-sightedness of Australian rugby officialdom was the disrespect shown to Dan Vickerman, and I know that Robbie Deans can’t be blamed for that. Just because he was a second rower rather than a twinkle-toes or a night-clubbing Leaguie expected to lure their supporters to rugby, he was taken for granted.
I can’t think of another rugby nation that wouldn’t have done whatever was necessary to keep him. Not only was he one of the two best second rowers in the world but you also got your lineout coach and real team leader thrown in for nothing.
They don’t have much choice right now.
Because the selectors and coaches of the past 5-7 years have been reluctant to blood new talent and have banked on the veterans to hang around and pull the Wallabies through when necessary, the up and comers have been going elsewhere or just have not been exposed at the top level.
So while this explosion of youth may cause some short term pain for Wallaby supporters, it will also reap long term benefits, hopefully starting as early as 2011.
If it is a policy and not just someones observation, I think it is good. Reality of any sport at the top level is that youth with the same abilities will always out do the old fart.
I always thought that the hanging on to George Gregan seemingly to gain the record of tests for an Australian player was a massive mistake. He was well past it. New players need to be encouraged and able to see a way ahead. The Wallabies have simply been lucky that Genia came along as many half backs had given up because of encumbancy.
Hopefully the selectors have an eye on 2011. If so, whats lost?