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In 1991 the NZRU decided to solve the issue of whether Alex Wyllie, the incumbent, should coach the All Blacks in the World Cup tournament, or whether John Hart should get the job by setting up a co-coaching system of Wyllie and Hart.
The result was that the All Blacks were split into two camps — the Alex Wyllie (Canterbury) faction and the John Hart (Auckland) faction. Players in the different factions did not talk to each other. The coaches did not work together. And a good All Blacks side were defeated by the Wallabies in the semi-final at Dublin. A feature of that Wallaby campaign was the tightness of the leadership group. Bob Dwyer, Bob Templeton, Nick Farr-Jones and Michael Lynagh worked in well together to eliminate the traditional NSW-Queensland rivalry which had been a cancer in Australian rugby.
Fast forward to today, a month or so before the 2007 World Cup starts. The Wallaby camp is showing all the signs of the factionalism that destroyed the All Blacks in 1991. The All Black camp is showing the same signs of solidarity, purpose and unity as the Wallaby camp did in 1991.
At the time it was clear that a potentially dysfunctional Wallaby coaching staff was selected to replace the failed Eddie Jones regime. John Connolly was selected as head coach because he was the last coach standing who fitted the ARU’s requirement that the head coach must have seven years experience at the provincial coaching levels.
The advertisement was written to ensure that Ewen McKenzie, rather than David Nucifora (who did not fit the seven year requirement) got the job. But when McKenzie took himself out of the race, the only coach left was Connolly. Connolly’s record was barely passable with the Reds in the Super 12 and in Europe.
A very experienced person in Australian rugby told me at the time that he and others expected to provide Connolly with plenty of guidance in implementing a more expansive, modern style of rugby which Connolly had avoided throughout his coaching career.
Connolly was allowed to bring with him his friend Michael Foley as the restart coach. But Foley was not made a selector. The two other selectors were Scott Johnson, the backs coach, and Michael O’Connor, who spots talented players for the ARU. The theory behind this selection group was that Johnson and O’Connor would over-rule Connolly’s penchant for cautious selections and negative play.
This theory has come unstuck. Last year, after a Johnson-inspired Wallaby side thrashed the Springboks 49-0 at Brisbane, the Wallabies reverted to a kicking game at Sydney and narrowly won the most boring rugby test ever played. At half-time in the kickathon, Johnson begged Connolly to allow the Wallabies to go back to the game that had worked so well at Brisbane. To no avail.
Connolly has destabilised Johnson’s position further this year by introducing the league great Andrew Johns to Wallaby coaching sessions. To be fair, Johns seems to have introduced some innovative kicks into the Wallabies’ game. But Johnson (probably rightly) feels that Johns is pre-empting his role.
Meanwhile Connolly has gone out of his way to support Foley by praising the improvements in the Wallaby scrum, especially the work of Matt Dunning. In my view this is all nonsense. As soon as the Wallabies got a northern hemisphere referee in the test against NZ at Eden Park, Dunning was penalised and scrummed off the park. And this is a foretaste of what the Wallabies can expect if Dunning remains in place in the front row.
Last week John Muggleton, the defence coach, walked out of the John Eales dinner after Paul McLean, the president of the ARU, failed to name him as one of the coaches who had improved the Wallabies in 2007. Muggleton, the architect of the defensive system that won the 1999 World Cup by allowing only one try for the entire tournament, had put his name forward – unsuccessfully – to coach the Reds in the Super 14 next year.
Greg Growden, who has done an excellent job in the SMH in unraveling this sad story, reports that several players have lost confidence in some of the coaching staff.
So Camp Wallaby is not a group of happy campers. There are splits in the coaching ranks, and between senior players and coaches. The history of rugby suggests that this is a recipe for disaster at the World Cup.