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When Steve Roach, the assistant coach of the NSW State of Origin side, called referee Tony Archer “a fucking cheat” after the third match last year, it was suggested he should stand down. Ricky Stuart’s series of abusive outbursts, and his “conspiracy” rants following the defeat of his Kangaroos side in the World Cup final, are far more unacceptable than any of the Roach nonsense.
If Stuart does not resign immediately, he should be sacked as the Kangaroos coach.
A simple comparison with the Stuart wild-eyed and mad-tongued behaviour after the Kangaroos lost an un-losable final can be drawn with the dignity shown by the All Blacks coach Graham Henry after New Zealand were booted out of the 2007 RWC in a controversial loss to France.
The difference is stark.
Henry copped it sweet, and he has been rewarded with an international sports award for showing grace under pressure, Hemingway’s definition of style.
Stuart has embarrassed himself, rugby league, the World Cup tournament. and the Kangaroos.
He has to go.
Aside from his banshee behaviour, there are real concerns that Stuart is not up to coaching the national side from a coaching perspective.
Phil Gould has an interesting article in the SMH about Stuart’s coaching of the Kangaroos in the final which is titled: ‘Elementary, really. How Kiwis kept it simple to bust the Roos’.
Gould and Stuart are hardly mates, although they once were.
They now write columns for rival newspapers. Stuart’s columns are given the endorsement ‘Rugby league’s best thinker.’
This is a direct attack on the thoughtful but often anti-News Ltd pieces crafted by Gould. Gould has the title, The Analyst, above his by-line.
So there is some personal history and animosity involved whenever the two engage in an argument.
Despite this, Gould has made a convincing case against Stuart having the coaching nous to be in charge of the Kangaroos.
Gould makes the point (which I made in my analysis of the World Cup final) that the tactics and manner of the Kiwis in the final had all the hallmarks of the Wayne Bennett winning approach to one-off big matches.
The Kiwis had an effective but simple game plan which they stuck to patiently, even though early on it looked as if they were going to be over-run.
The Kangaroos, according to Gould, were poorly selected, with a lack of big players to support Petero Civoniceva.
Losing Steve Price, in retrospect, was a huge blow to the Kangaroos. But Stuart did not really appreciate this loss and failed to make an adequate replacement for the big, workaholic prop.
The Kiwis, according to Gould, worked out by half time that they could burst the soft middle of the Kangaroos and exploited the lack of big men there.
Then Gould touches on Stuart’s prickly personality, the pent-up fury he has which seems to explode as he prowls the sidelines like s caged tiger. Gould concedes that “there’s no doubt he can coach.”
But this concession reads in context more like a cover-up to allow the killer blow: “Like in most big-match preparations conducted by Stuart, his men were wound so tight they exploded out of the barriers in the early stages, ran themselves ragged and saved little for a long run up to the home stretch.”
In other words, Stuart is just no good as a coach when it comes to preparing sides for the big matches that the Kangaroos are invariably involved in.
The best outcome for the Kangaroos would be for Bennett to come on as coach of the Kangaroos. But whether Bennett would want to come back to the Kangaroos after being effectively sacked is an unanswered question right now.
And whether the officials who got rid of Bennett – a bit like the NZRU with Robbie Deans – are big enough to admit they got it wrong is also up in the air.
What is not a issue for debate is that Ricky Stuart has to go.