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Saturday night’s press conference was one of the most disgraceful moments in the entire history of Australian Rugby.
The stench of awful culture, long associated with the playing group is starting to reek not only from the playing group but also administration. Ewen McKenzie is probably the last man who should have fell on his sword on Saturday night.
Critics might point to his supposedly poor win record, but when you consider that he nearly completed a whole year without losing at home, as well as having to deal with the frankly ridiculous expectation that he should be winning more games against the clear top two sides in the world, that should not be an issue.
rugby union can no longer afford to lurch from one disciplinary crisis to the next when the game is already struggling to halt the decline it’s been suffering for the last decade.
The fact that things got anywhere close to a player revolt is outrageous. The ARU have for years been too tolerant of cancerous personalities in the dressing room.
The three amigos of Beale, O’Connor and Cooper might have been separated, but the fact they weren’t thrown out all together is typical of an administration that is terrified of losing their marketable players that they can’t replace.
While the likes of O’Connor were eventually discarded, the fact that Beale and Quade Cooper didn’t follow him, despite also being negative influences on the game, was outrageous.
The same should be said for the offenders in the Dublin crisis when the aftermath was talk of a split dressing room because teammates “dobbed them in.”
Action should have been taken then to totally remove the main offenders from Australian Rugby. Whoever the new Australian coach is, he needs to be brought in with a zero tolerance approach to this sort of stuff, because it’s been going on for to long now.
The players who are seen to be disruptive, unable to toe the line or keep their mouth shut need to be shown the door immediately and begin the process of reimplementing a positive and professional culture to the national team.
Whether it’s the skipper or the star players who are given the chop, these hard decisions need to be made, regardless of the pressures of World Cups and player marketability and to do that; Rugby needs a CEO who has the balls to make these hard decisions.
The leadership from Bill Pulver cannot be overlooked in this crisis or even throughout his whole reign as CEO. The second word got out about the incident on the São Paulo bound plane, a total media ban on players should have been implemented and players hidden away until they were returned to Australia and investigated and briefed by senior management.
The fact that Hooper and Folau were even allowed to announce their idiotic support for a player under suspension and investigation is unbelievable enough, and they should have found themselves following Beale through the same process.
This issue has been allowed to fester for the last two weeks to the point that the most qualified coach in Australian rugby has found his position untenable and quite frankly, someone should have been out the door straight after McKenzie.
Pulver’s blaming of both the Rugby media and public was embarrassing for the game when the events of the last two weeks are simply the fallout of his organisations terrible management throughout the year.
At the very least, Pulver should have to show cause to the ARU board in order to keep his job. Only Ben Buckley’s six-year tenure at the FFA has been more disastrous of a reign for a sports administrator in recent years and Pulver hasn’t even reached two.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.