The problem is that he's also not really qualified, and while his spray is justified he needs to accept responsibility.....His background is rugby league, and he only came on as defence coach....The board also need to accept responsibility for knowingly appointing an underqualified coach in charge with a team of other underqualified coaches....Elsewhere, with the return of Giteau at flyhalf the Brumbies attack could hardly break the advantage line at times because he stands so far deep...
S293: So right. I was disgusted by much of the so-called spray. The macho-men whom think this is 'just deserts for those poor players' are badly misled. Blasting all the younger, non-senior Brumbies players like this was a disgrace. It's none of their fault, and never was.
The core fault, the beating heart of this nightmare of a decline of a once-great franchise/team/culture, can be readily established from the right 'system-wide' view of how a regional rugby team/business is actually managed and enhanced (or not, as the case may be):
- First, the Board of the ACTRU was utterly derelict in (a) for many years appointing sub-par coaches with inadequate support staff (support coaches in the modern game rival head coaches in importance and value) and (b) indulging 'elite' players on the utterly mythical view that fine current players make fine team advisers, informal selectors, and play-strategy analysts (where history clearly shows they generally don't) and thus should be permitted an almost equal voice to all other managers and ACTRU leaders.
- Second, as many have said for 2+ years, Friend was simply not good enough to restore sustained Brumbies excellence in the context presented to him, and, when combined with an incompetent, lilly-livered Board and excess player influence, the clear outcome was a mix of mediocrity and lack of accurate, honest self-analysis by the entire ACTRU system.
The results are there for all to see, and to think that Rea, with his odd selections and inexplicable combinations (thus highlighting his own complete lostness in the role), and now on a job search with few good prospects, is going to attribute blame where it lies (i.e. to the coaches current and recent past, and to a badly out-of-its-depth Board over indulging way-past-use-by-date senior players) is naive in the extreme. Rea is going to - you guessed it - blame the players and lay 90% of the blame for the hopelessness of it all at their feet. This is both unethical and disreputable. (BTW, as an aside, see Poidevin's view in the SMH online as to where blame for the Tahs' current travails should be laid - with the players, not!)
This toxic and fully public 'spray' tactic is nothing more than the complete, final, shrunk-wrapped manifestation of the decay of responsible leadership at the ACTRU. Listening to them all (or noting their silence more like), no one there of real seniority is actually responsible for anything - you can't even find the Board's members' names on the Brumbies' web site! - taking honest responsibility (as all good senior leaders should) might rightly imply the obvious need for mass resignations and the loss of the blazer-wearing, weekends-happy, world of old school rugby networking chatting fondly over past glories and matey business linkages. Taking meaningful responsibility (and accountability) would mean congratulating the excellent young players coming through and thanking them for trying. That's want happens in well-run businesses, but such weak forms of responsibility-neglect are the sad reality in many RUs in Australia today - the calibre of leadership of many of the RU Boards is actually well exceeded by the calibre of the many young men and women who wish to make the game their life and driven passion.
