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I write a rugby column for The Sydney Morning Herald which is published in the paper on Saturday and online some time on Friday.
On Friday afternoon, in preparation for my Monday column on The Roar, I was reading an article about the coming Super Rugby final and the comments attached to it, which were instructive, as they invariably are.
One of the comments mentioned that three senior Wallabies, Matt Giteau, Drew Mitchell and Adam Ashley-Cooper had tweeted about me and the article.
Now I need to say right away that being criticised is no big deal. Journalists bowl bouncers and they should expect to receive them back. There is, in fact, a certain thrill in knowing that players find what you write so challenging to them that they feel impelled to embark on some response.
So I am not criticising the three players in the Wallabies for taking me on.
What I am critical of, and this is the crucial point, is the reason why they have taken me on. They clearly resent being told that they are a significant obstacle to the long-term development of a powerful, new Wallabies squad.
This lack of respect for the Wallabies culture is what I find distasteful about their tweets.
Cheers for the vote of confidence today in your gossip column @spirozavos ????
Thoughts @giteau_rugby @AdamCoopy https://t.co/tsjtvfjlgy
— Drew Mitchell (@drew_mitchell) August 5, 2016
The article in the SMH that Giteau, Mitchell and Ashley-Cooper found so objectionable made a very clear and necessary case for regime change in the Wallabies. I insisted that Michael Cheika’s “back to the future” plan for reviving the Wallabies would end in tears.
The article stated that if the Giteau Law players (the three mentioned and Will Genia) were preferred over younger players then players who are the future of Australian rugby would miss out on gaining the experience that comes from playing Test rugby.
Nick Frisby, for instance, has been dropped from the Wallabies squad for The Rugby Championship. Will Genia, who has been injured, and Nick Phipps are the potential starters. Neither of these players has very much to offer the Wallabies right now, and certainly nothing looking forward to Rugby World Cup 2019.
@spirozavos maybe some young journo's that "should" be given an opportunity to take your column in SMH? or u prefer they earn that gig too??
— Adam Ashley-Cooper (@AdamCoopy) August 5, 2016
Drew Mitchell and Adam Ashley-Cooper (who admitted after the Rugby World Cup 2015 tournament that he didn’t expect to play for the Wallabies again) are blocking the chances of players like Luke Morahan, dropped from the train-on squad for the The Rugby Championship tournament, and Dane Haylett-Petty who was one of the few Wallabies to play well against England in the series loss.
The case against Matt Giteau, I suggested, is even more open and shut. His successors are already available for Cheika, if he has the smarts to select them. Reece Hodge, Semu Kerevi (my pick) and even Quade Cooper, with fingers crossed on his defence are available for Cheika to select.
But it is odds on that Giteau will be in the starting side against the All Blacks. Why else would the ARU, Cheika and Giteau go through the trouble of getting his temporary release from Toulon?
Nick Bishop wrote a terrific article on The Roar recently extolling the virtues and possibilities of Kyle Godwin as a long-time inside centre for the Wallabies.
I picked up on this and wrote that the “worst aspect of the Giteau selection, (is that) Kyle Godwin, a player with the potential to be a great Wallaby centre, has not even made the squad.”
My point is this. For these three Wallabies to find that this argument is so outrageous tells us that they have a sense of entitlement to the Wallabies jersey, even to the detriment of the team’s development after the disappointment of the Rugby World Cup 2015 final (where Giteau unfortunately had to leave the field with concussion).
Those of us with long enough memories remember the way Rod Macqueen’s great Wallabies side of 1999 to 2003 collapsed by Rugby World Cup 2007, because senior players drove out the great coach and captured the side, feeling entitled to do so, and set in train a collapse of the Wallabies culture.
We go back to Dane Coles and his sense that the victory of his side was a win for the Hurricanes’ inclusive culture.
What the three Wallabies’ tweets have shown me is that this notion of the team before individuals no longer seems to apply at a national level, at least as far as the three veterans are concerned.
As I say, it is going to end in tears.