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Sorry Fitzy, Alan Jones is needed on the ARU board, not as Waratahs coach

30th April, 2017
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The ARU has copped a lot of criticism. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
Expert
30th April, 2017
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You have to hand it to Peter FitzSimons, he has come up with the killer idea that Alan Jones should coach the Waratahs.

In Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald, the former Wallaby and now columnist and author who usually bags Jones without mercy argued that Jones “was a brilliant coach in the ’80s, a terrific motivator of young men.” And the Fitzy punchline to this argument is that as Waratahs coach Jones “could work his magic as he once did with the Manly and Wallabies sides.”

Nice try, Fitzy. I don’t think, though, you understand how much coaching has changed since the amateur days in the 1980s.

The hectoring style that Jones perfected with great success in the 1980s does not get a response from the modern Generation X, Y and Z players.

They respond to respond a mentoring, information-based, skills-based coaching method, if they respond at all.

In fact, it is clear to me that there is too much Jones-style coaching in Australia based on the old-fashion style and methods of Alan and Eddie Jones in his previous Australian career. This is a coaching method that induces over-the-top emotionalism on the field from the players that leads to these players losing their discipline in tough moments in tight matches.

You see much emotion, as well, from the Australian coaches in the box when things go for or more likely go against their team.

A case in point was Nick Stiles in the Reds box on Saturday night during the famous Queensland Reds–NSW Waratahs derby. Stiles was jumping up and down throughout the match as if he had jolts of electricity being shot through his body.

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After the match, Stiles blamed the referee Paul Williams, a New Zealander employed in Japan, for the loss. “You just want a fair go, don’t you?” Stiles told reporters after the match. “Gee, if you go back through the whole game, you could say, ‘If’s that’s a penalty, why aren’t we getting one for exactly the same thing?’ Of course it was a deciding factor.”

We have seen with Michael Cheika with the Wallabies that there is no improvement in results from coaches who blame all their defeats on the referee.

This is shooting the messenger stuff, rather than the message given to the Reds (if there was any such message) that they had to stop giving away stupid penalties.

Samu Kerevi, for instance, a great player in the making, has to be coached out of throwing his body at the legs of runners without using his arms in a tackle. No amount of hysterics in the coaching box against this type of penalty will get Kerevi to tackle legally. But disciplined coaching improving his tackling technique will.

Samu Kerevi Queensland Reds Super Rugby Union 2017

The Reds were the better team at Suncorp Stadium. They scored four tries to the two by the Waratahs but they lost the must-win match 26–29 by allowing Bernard Foley to boot over five penalties.

The impact of this ill-discipline can be seen by the 11–4 penalty count against the Reds towards the end of the match when the scoreline was Reds 26, Waratahs 23. Foley kicked the penalty from this 11th penalty conceded by the Reds, and two more successful kicks at goal from two further penalties.

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All the Waratahs had to do in the end was defend a determined 27-phase attack from the Reds at the end of the match. I say “all” slightly tongue in cheek. The fact is that the defence was pragmatic, ruthless, disciplined with no one rushing out of the line.

This discipline matched the calm, undemonstrative behaviour of Daryl Gibson in the Waratahs box.

In matters of discipline, it’s a matter of like coach, like players.

The danger for the Reds when the players behaved in the same pumped up, unrestrained, over-exuberant, excessively emotional attitude adopted by coach Stiles was highlighted shortly before half-time.

After 32 minutes, the Reds led 19–7 thanks to a brilliant intercept by Quade Cooper who broke out from near his own try line, ran about 70m, put through a kick with his left foot for the flier Izaia Perese to pick up and score.

This try (in a sense a 14-point turnaround) was followed by another sensational break-out by the Reds which was thwarted by an equally sensational chase of a flying Samu Kerevi and turnover, both made by Michael Hooper.

Hooper then ran a brilliant line from the ensuing play to score under the posts to bring the Waratahs back into the game.

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This try was scored just before the half-time buzzer. The Reds had to kick off. The next break-down in play ended the half.

Reds Super Rugby player Quade Cooper

This was the time to be smart and kick the ball out on the full and end play for the half. Where were the calming instructions from the coaching box to do this, or something like this, say a long kick-off?

Instead, Quade Cooper kicked a short, contestable ball. Contestable balls now often result in penalties against the players charging towards the catcher.

Oh dear, Perese attacked the jumper in the air. He was rightly given a yellow card.

In the second half, with 15 playing 14, the Waratahs started to exert a dominance that was not apparent despite the tight score line in the first half.

Perese is a tremendous talent. He has speed to burn and could be a prolific try-scorer in future years for the Reds and the Wallabies. But he has to temper his over-aggression.

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Clearly, though, he is not getting this message from a coach who sends out the inferred message through his body language that over-the-top reactions to what is happening in the match is what is needed from his players.

The opposite is the truth.

What is needed from the Reds players is the sort of professionalism and emotional discipline that, say, George Smith exhibited when he and Michael Hooper – who also played superbly – had one of the great loose forward battles.

While Nick Stiles was giving his impression of an over-wrought puppet being pulled by a dozen emotional strings in the Reds coaching box, his opposite, Daryl Gibson, was sitting there in his box stoic, impassively, sending a stream of messages through to the coaches near the field.

In the end, the disciplined calmness of the Waratahs coaching box created the mindset for the players to tough out their unlikely victory.

This defensive effort from the Waratahs was a case of leaving the best for last.

Daryl Gibson still has a lot of questions to answer or provide answers to on the field before the dogs are called off.

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The side has a poorly constructed and played defensive system. The Reds scored some very soft tries by exploiting all sorts of holes in the Waratahs defensive patterns, especially around the rucks.

Where is the improvement in the play of Israel Folau?

Alan Jones, correctly in my opinion, has claimed that Folau is ‘over-rated’. He was out-played by his opposite, Karmichael Hunt. It is looking like Michael Cheika will have no other option but to play Folau on the wing for the Wallabies if he is to be in the starting team.

israel-folau-wallabies-rugby-union-australia-bledisloe-cup-2016

The Reds were stacked with any number of young players with the potential to be outstanding Wallabies. Where are their equivalents in the Waratahs?

And this lack of outstanding young talent in the Waratahs of a quality to match the Reds, raises these further questions: what has happened to the recruiting system that Michael Cheika set up? Has it been dismantled? Or has it been replaced and by what?

Now getting back to Alan Jones. There is not much value in him working with the Waratahs. But there is a great deal of value in appointing him, Bob Dwyer and Rod Macqueen (the three most successful Wallabies coaches) to the board of the ARU.

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Right now the ARU has a board that is expert on gender matters (Elizabeth Broderick) and has extensive business experience (chairman Cameron Clyne, Ann Sherry, Pip Marlowe), some former Wallabies with business expertise (John Eales, Paul McLean, Brett Robinson), a former marketing executive (Bill Pulver) and a West Australian businessman and former long-time Perth grade rugby player (Geoffrey Stooke).

It is easy to see in the context of Australian rugby, with its heartland in the Sydney clubs and rugby schools, the problem with the composition of the board.

This board has no real representative of grassroots rugby, especially as it involves the heartland of the game in Sydney.

Jones, Dwyer and Macqueen are stalwarts of the heartland, the great rugby schools and clubs that still provide the bulk of the Super Rugby players and the best of the Wallabies.

With these stalwarts on the board, you would never have got a chief executive, Bill Pulver, complaining about the clubs in Sydney and Brisbane ‘pissing away’ the ARU’s grants to them.

As practical business people, too, this trio would never have allowed the current impasse between the ARU board and the Melbourne Rebels and Western Force franchises to reach the deadlock it is presently in.

SANZAAR, apparently, has a deadline on May 10 to finalise at Tokyo the details of next year’s Super Rugby tournament.

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Wayne Smith has reported in The Australian that “while the game is tearing itself apart over this issue, the ARU is not scheduled to meet until June 23, although there may be a phone hook-up of directors in May – presumably before the SANZAAR meeting.”

Why the ARU is not in a virtual permanent online and phone hook-up meeting until this existential problem to the future of rugby in Australia is settled is beyond me.

You could bet your house that Alan Jones, Bob Dwyer and Rod Macqueen would not have sat on a board that allowed the ship of Australian rugby to crash on to the rocks without any one trying to prevent the slow-motion wreck.

They would not have sat on a board that handed out the managing director and CEO’s job to Bill Pulver.

An obvious successor to John O’Neill, for instance, was Matt Carroll, the main organiser of the highly successful Rugby World Cup 2003 tournament in Australia. Carroll has just beaten over 230 or so other applicants for the prestigious job of chief executive at the Australian Olympic Committee.

Does anyone in rugby believe that Bill Pulver, an old school mate of the then ARU chairman Michael Hawker, would have survived his appointment to the ARU if 230 or so applicants had been interviewed?

Would Pulver had even been given an interview for the job of chief executive of the AOC? Not likely, I’d say.

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A board with Jones, Dwyer and Macqueen on it, moreover, would be very knowledgeable about sports politics and politics in general as it applies to the needs of promoting rugby.

You can’t help thinking when you look at the composition of the present ARU board that there is an element of fostering the business careers of the appointees and winning positions on trophy boards through their rugby connection.

Bear with me while I try to explain this.

Right now there is a massive push from assorted business, political, media and sporting interests to unseat John Coates as president of the Olympic Committee after 27 years in job.

Bill Pulver Cameron Clyne press conference

A historic vote between Coates and his challenger Danielle Roche, an Olympian, businesswoman and member of a distinguished old-money Melbourne family, is coming up on May 6.

Roche has been supported by numerous influential corporate leaders, including Ann Sherry.

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Here is how The Australian’s Chip Le Grand, an intrepid anti-Coates/pro-Roche advocate, reported Ms Sherry’s intervention:

“Ms Sherry, a former chief executive of the Bank of Melbourne voted the most influential woman in Australian business, said she was dismayed by reports that former AOC chief Fiona de Jong quit her post amid bullying and harassment allegations against the AOC media boss Mike Tancred, a loyal ally of Mr Coates …

“It says something is wrong inside the organisation when good people leave. Sport is about team culture team. You can’t have the organisation that purports to represent elite sport looking as though it doesn’t apply the same standard to themselves.

“The AOC is looking like an organisation with very old-fashioned governance, built around a couple of people.”

When I read that, my mind went back to the Di Patston–Kurtley Beale debacle when the ARU board, with Ann Sherry involved as a board member, backed Patson leaving the ARU despite her case against Kurtley Beale which seemed to be at least as serious as Tancred’s alleged bullying.

An explanation of sorts of Ann Sherry’s support for the new broom Danielle Roche came in a long article by Roy Masters in the SMH entitled ‘If Coates loses the AOC presidency, Australia loses voice on the world stage’.

Roy Masters has unrivalled contacts in the sports and political community. He links Ann Sherry’s push for Danielle Roche to a thwarted effort from the ARU to get her on a Coates-led (Coates-tailing?) AOC executive.

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Here are the crucial paragraphs from the Masters article setting out his case on this matter:

“Rugby union is one of the sports with a short memory. When Roche made an approach to the ARU to vote for her, calls were made to the sport’s Sydney headquarters to see what Coates could do for it.

“He had already arranged for the organisers of the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan to attend Tokyo’s 2020 co-ordinated meeting to discuss joint interests. But according to one rugby insider, the suggestion was made Coates should include ARU board member Ann Sherry on his ticket for the May 6 election. Coates pointed out positions on the AOC executive are traditionally reserved for heads of Olympic sports and past Olympians.”

John Coates

Here are several questions that Bill Pulver might like to answer on this matter.

  • Did he put the suggestion about an AOC executive position for Ann Sherry to John Coates?
  • Was this suggestion approved by the ARU board?
  • Will the ARU support John Coates at the May 6 election?

The point here is that Coates was crucial to rugby becoming an Olympic sport.

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This, in turn, allowed the Australian women’s sevens team to win Australia’s second gold medal for rugby (the first was won by the Wallabies at the 1908 Olympics in London) at the Rio Olympics.

The ARU board, particularly the female members, has seen great significance in the women’s sevens victory at Rio for the future of Australian rugby. It follows from this, that the ARU should support Coates for supporting rugby in this crucial way.

The great columnist on The Times, the Bernard Levin, once famously noted that in some elections it is necessary to vote “with a clothes peg on your nose.” The AOC election is one such example.

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