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SPIRO: The All Blacks system is the way to go for the Wallabies

21st October, 2014
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What will prove to be the difference between the Wallabies and All Blacks in the Rugby World Cup final? (Photo: Paul Barkley/LookPro)
Expert
21st October, 2014
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You know an organisation is in trouble when jokes about it start making the rounds, like this gem from New Zealand that mocks the ructions that have rocked the Wallabies in recent weeks.

The Queensland police reported this on Sunday morning: ‘Many people are reporting a robbery at Suncorp Stadium last night. Sorry guys, we have no jurisdiction to investigate.’

Boom! Boom!

There is an old adage that is relevant for the Wallabies: ‘If you can’t beat them, then join them.’ And in an article in The Australian headlined ‘ARU must adopt All Black coaching model‘, Wayne Smith has argued just that.

Smith wants the Wallabies coaching staff to emulate the All Blacks set-up. He nominated Michael Cheika as head coach, with Michael Foley (forwards) and Stephen Larkham (backs) as his assistants.

There are obvious problems with this arrangement. 

Would Foley and Larkham continue as the head coaches of their franchises, the Western Force and the Brumbies? Or would they come on-board after the 2015 Super Rugby tournament ends? Would this arrangement be in force only for the 2015 season? Or a continuing one?

In the end, Larkham announced on Tuesday that he wouldn’t be part of a Wallabies coaching set-up. Given his lack of experience as a coach, this is the right decision.

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Smith makes two other suggestions for the coaching panel that deserve further consideration.

First, he wants an outside selector; an Australian equivalent of Grant Fox, the third selector for the All Blacks. Smith suggests Bob Dwyer or John Connolly as “the best judges of rugby players around”.

My feeling is that there is a better solution than this.

That solution embraces Smith’s suggestion that a “man of stature” be added to the Wallabies camp. He instances John Eales or Nick Farr-Jones as “golden greats” who could travel with the team as a “living embodiment of its standards”.

Sir Brian Lochore did this for the All Blacks. And Grant Fox is currently filling this role for the All Blacks, as well as being a third selector.

The current equivalent of Fox in Australian rugby would be Rod Macqueen. He was not a great player like Fox, but he is the most successful coach the Wallabies have had. Macqueen has the sharpest rugby brain in Australia and would make an excellent selector.

Macqueen should be co-opted as a selector and as a sort of father figure, in the Sir Brian Lochore mode, in the Wallabies camp. It is the role that Bob Templeton of blessed memory played in Bob Dwyer’s Wallabies that won the 1991 Rugby World Cup tournament.

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There is more to the All Blacks success than just the team’s coaching and selecting structure. Here is the All Blacks management for their northern tour, in the order of its listing: Darren Shand (manager), Steve Hansen (head coach/selector), Ian Foster (assistant coach/selector), Grant Fox (selector), Gilbert Enoka (assistant manager), Mike Cron (forwards coach), Mick Byrne (skills coach), Brian ‘Aussie’ McLean (analyst), Alister Rogers (performance analyst), Dr Tony Page (doctor), Peter Gallagher (physiotherapist), George Duncan (manual therapist), Dr Nic Gill (strength and conditioning coach), Katrina Darry (nutrionist), Kevin ‘Chalky’ Carr (logistics manager), Joe Locke (media manager), Bianco Thiel (team services manager).

All Blacks support staff: Don Tricker (high-performance manager), Jason Healy (performance analysis manager), Mike Anthony (high-performance player development manager).

Managing this All Blacks camp of 54 people must be an extremely taxing and time-consuming job, so it is noteworthy that the first name in the management group is Darren Shand, the manager.

The New Zealand Rugby Union lists Shand as follows:

Darren Shand took on the role of the All Blacks Manager in 2004 after four years with the Crusaders during which the team made every Super 12 final and won the competition twice. He served as manager of the Canterbury Air New Zealand NPC side from 1999 and also managed New Zealand A during their tour of France, Wales and Romania in 2000. He previously served as Marketing Manager with tourism pioneers AJ Hackett Bungy.

I am not trying to be controversial (or unduly so!) with this next statement, but reading this CV you can’t help but wonder at the difference in experience with rugby teams that Shand had to go through before he entered the All Blacks camp with appointments made recently to the Wallabies camp.

Another point of difference is the very clear differentiation of the roles within the All Blacks camp. And the order of seniority. Moreover, there is an organisational clarity here that works.

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This sort of clarity in the roles of the various members of the management and support staff has been obviously missing in recent times in the Wallabies camp.

Having a clear differentiation of roles means that head office and senior members of the All Blacks camp, especially the manager and coach, can get a line on how effective each individual in the management and support staff is in their role.

So in addition to the Wayne Smith notion of copying the coaching structure, the ARU needs to be far more thoughtful and effective in setting up the Wallabies management structure. There should be a clearly defined list of responsibilities and tasks within the management group for each member.

This goes back to quality of administration, something that has been lacking in the ARU in the last year or so.

There are two other matters that deserve noting. The New Zealand Rugby Union has allowed Steve Hansen to take an extra player on the tour, Luke Romano, “to bring him back into the group and up to speed with the All Black strategies and skillsets”.

The presumption in this, and the record proves that the presumption is correct, is that Romano will benefit greatly from being with the squad for the tour.

Compare this confidence in the All Blacks camp, improving players coming into it, with the worrying comment that Clyde Rathbone made recently that Brumbies players came back from Ewen McKenzie’s training camps bewildered by the fact that they got less out of them than in similar camps with the Brumbies.

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This gets us back to an essential point. Yes, copy as far as possible the All Blacks set-up. But don’t think that this is the essential change to be made. The key element in the success of the All Blacks is more about culture than structure.

And the key to the strength of the All Blacks culture, on and off the field, lies in the mantra that the team comes first!

The task for Cheika, with whoever his support coaches and staff may be, is to create a similar culture based around the jersey/team for the Wallabies.

This means cutting out the cancer of the me-first mentality that has diminished the Wallabies, on and off the field, in recent years.

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