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Australian rugby needs a champion team, not a team of champions

Roar Guru
25th July, 2017
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Australia's players need to accept a pay cut to ensure the game's future. (AAP Image/David Moir)
Roar Guru
25th July, 2017
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5241 Reads

Last week The Sydney Morning Herald reported that ARU chair Cameron Clyne hinted that if the ARU was legally unable to axe an Australian Super Rugby franchise, he would resign his position.

Clyne’s reasoning was that he couldn’t see how Australian rugby is to sustain five Super Rugby teams.

This strengthens a suspicion that I have held for some time, that Clyne has never really been committed enough to do this job. An individual as accomplished as Clyne should not be throwing his hands up and saying “I’m out of ideas” after only a year and a half in the role.

Only Clyne knows the truth as to his level of commitment, but if he isn’t 100 per cent committed to making Australian rugby great again, he should resign. Regardless of whether or not the ARU succeeds in cutting a team. That way another leader who is willing to do the job can be found.

Despite Clyne’s apparent view that a five-team ARU would be unsalvageable, there have been other good ideas about how Australian rugby might dig itself out of this quagmire.

Another SMH article that jumped out at me recently quoted Owen Finegan describing the recent Scotland victory over Australia as being an example of a “champion team defeating a team of champions”.

It is a wildly used philosophy, but Finegan deserves great credit for highlighting it in the Australian rugby context at this time. Because despite the availability of some extremely well paid ‘champion’ players in the Wallabies, Reds and Waratahs, none of those teams are performing very well.

In fact, the Brumbies and Force, who this year had rosters that were quite bereft of big, established names, came first and second in the Aussie conference this year. These two teams exemplified the ‘champion teams beat teams of champions’ philosophy.

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They were well drilled in the non-negotiable basics of rugby of defence and set piece, while playing with superior passion than Queensland and NSW. These are things that the players of those teams can be proud of, but even more so the coaching staff who made the difference.

This all begs the question, if paying ‘champion’ players like Israel Folau, David Pocock, Will Genia, Michael Hooper, Bernard Foley, Karmichael Hunt and Quade Cooper big dollars isn’t working, why are the ARU, Reds and Waratahs still doing it. Why aren’t they concentrating on hiring and training good coaches?

Cameron Clyne

(AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

In a recent article, Peter Fitzsimmons eloquently stated what Australian Rugby’s response should be to players who demand salaries which the code cannot afford (without compromising the grassroots rugby).

“If the Australian game can’t afford you, so be it. We’ve still got enough cash to shout you a taxi to the airport,” he wrote.

Given we know that top players are now earning up to one million dollars a year, what if the ARU and Super teams put a figure on Fitzsimmons’ suggestion and said to the top players ‘If half a million dollars a year plus endorsements isn’t enough for the privilege of playing rugby for your country, then see you later’?

Given that axing a Super Rugby team is estimated to save about $6 million a year, surely capping salaries for the top players in this fashion would be getting close to saving a similar amount?

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In practice this approach reminds me of the Bledisloe match in Brisbane in 2012, when Robbie Deans’ injury ravaged Wallabies, captained by soon-to-retire Nathan Sharpe, took the All Blacks to an 18-all draw. A Wallabies supporter made the comment on the way out: “The All Blacks should have flogged ’em, they were a bunch of no names led by a has been”. So clearly the Wallabies can still do well if well coached.

As such I’d rather send out teams with the likes of Sean McMahon, Liam Gill, Jono Lance, Dane Haylett-Petty and Joe Powell than Folau, Pocock, Hooper, Genia and Foley. As long as the bloke in the glass box had superior coaching smarts to our current crop of coaches.

Of course, the star players would be more than welcome to stick around if they were prepared to take the haircut, but what is certain is that Australian rugby can’t continue to compromise every other aspect of the game to keep them here.

So there you go Clyne (or whoever replaces him), Aussie rugby doesn’t have to be a basket case if we keep five teams, it just requires you to be open to different ideas.

Personally, the mantra ‘champion teams rather than teams of champions’ is the idea that I hope Aussie rugby takes on sooner rather than later.

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