When I saw that the Waratahs had announced a series of fan forums starting this Thursday (19 May), apparently to discuss how the Tahs could improve their fortunes and crowd numbers, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
In part because I already have a prior engagement which means I can’t attend that first one.
Although whether I would have got a comment or question in edgeways is an open question.
While the forum is apparently the first in a series, and with the indicated aim of providing fans with feedback and an inside perspective on the Tahs, it has been viewed by the media as a reaction to the crisis in support for the Tahs. That is, dwindling crowd numbers and crowds that are quite willing to jeer their own team.
The fact that the Tahs have not seen fit to have such forums previously gives a feel for the former.
The new regime of Waratahs Ltd (see below) would say the new broom is bringing new ideas, and this is why it is being done for the first time. But as always, perception becomes reality …
I’ll be interested to see what format they adopt to prevent it becoming chaos, but also whether any filtering is present to avoid or minimise the thorny questions and present the “Dorothy Dixers” that parliamentarians love so much.
Suffice to say if the fans don’t provide some venom and a bollocking, I’ll be surprised and indeed suspicious. This has all the prospects of making Julius Caesar’s last wander down to the forum look positively civil.
However, I also hope that the responses to questions won’t be as bland as those recently served up to The Roar by Jason Allen. See my comments on that post taking issue in that regard.
Two suggestions to begin with:
(i) Provide more than a week’s notice. Strangely enough all us fans have jobs and families that don’t revolve around rugby, and we might need to move things, or make allowances to attend.
(ii) Don’t have it on a week night, especially a Thursday. A Sunday afternoon would have been better. Straight away you have disenfranchised anyone with training that night (um, rugby players), anyone whose kids have training that night (um, parents of junior rugby players), anyone who has young kids, anyone who works long hours… in fact, you’ll be lucky to get two men and a dog when I think about it…
Keep in mind the Tahs are now run by a separate body, being Waratahs Ltd, after splitting off from NSWRU earlier this year. However, this break doesn’t really wash away the pong that hangs around the Tahs from years of perception of poor administration.
The Tahs bosses are as on the nose as the previous NSW Labor government, and the fact a bunch of new chums may be in charge will probably help them as much as it did old Kristina Keneally.
So is this forum just a PR exercise to make the fans feel like they have a voice, or a desperate cry for help by a team that has really lost any clue?
I don’t know which one is worse. But if the boys and girls at Moore Park seriously need the fans to tell them, presumably a bunch of qualified and paid (if not highly on both counts) professionals, then what are they doing down there? Playing Tetris and shopping their CV around to other sporting codes?
And if anyone from the Tahs happens to stumble on this here old blog and feel like they can’t pull a trick, damned if they do and damned if they don’t, you’re right!
Unfortunately all patience is now running out. You had your first, second and third chances, all Mulligans and some favours you never even knew you called on.
Tahs fans aren’t so much mad as hell (although the Cheetahs game did provoke that, too), but just sick of it all. When the rusted on supporters start losing passion, you’re in serious trouble.
Here’s a few tips on the questions I see them needing to deal with. Apologies to all those Roarers for whom this is repetition (in fact the Tahs don’t need this forum – just arguably to spend a few hours reading The Roar from the last few years), but given I can’t get down to this forum and clearly the Tahs need telling, I’ll repeat them and also provide Roarers with a chance to add their 20 cents worth.
1. Where’s the leadership and the plan?
I.e. start being seen to act like a professional sporting team administration. See above for my comments above about the clean break, but the unfortunate thing is that the NSWRU has been long seen as a cross between David Williamson’s ‘The Club’ and an episode of ‘Desperate Housewives’.
The NSWRU has seemed more likely to be infighting or fighting with the ARU, rather than running the game in NSW. The junior unions seem to have long complained they were ignored. Club rugby seemed to have been abandoned as dysfunctional (takes one to know one) and any thought of reform abandoned. And whenever a new coach needed to be picked, it all stepped up a notch.
So Waratahs Ltd needs to do everything to get away from that perception.
One thing that is sorely lacking is any sense of vision at NSWRU or the Tahs. While I am one to hate mission statements and that guff, I do feel like they need to set out how they are planning to develop and grow the game in NSW, and also the Tahs’ approach to the game as a team.
If you don’t say it, we don’t necessarily get it. But mainly because if you actually set it out we could have something to measure you by, and beat you over the head when you didn’t do it (“Where’s the running rugby you promised?!”-thwack!).
But back to to coaching.
2. Where’s the coaching and the structure?
I cannot remember the last time the ostensible first pick coach got the job. Picking coaches seems to turn into Keystone Kops, with rumours of Board Member A talking to X, while Board member B talks to Y, leading to coach X walking away… The irony being from memory Ewen McKenzie, our best coach during the professional era, wasn’t first choice at the time.
Ewen’s parting with the Tahs is a case in point, when the going get tough the coach got the punt when a number of other ills were also a problem (and arguably still are). Cue next round of Whacky Races to pick a successor.
By all accounts Chris Hickey is a good coach and a good bloke. He certainly had a good CV before coming to the Tahs. However, in game after game I seem to watch a team without structure or plan. One off runs. The half back passing to forwards standing still who then get monstered. Tries scored from individual brilliance rather than built.
This causes many fans to question what they hell they practice all week, because it doesn’t seem to show on the field. Oh it does against a poor team when we can show we are flat track bullies. But usually against the top teams when the pressure is on, we start to look like Bambi in the headlights. And that’s always the test of a truly great team. Winning under pressure, or from behind.
Which brings us to style. And this I think is the big one all fans complain about.
3. Where’s the entertainment?
The Tahs make watching paint dry a viable option at times. The Tahs dish up dirge after dirge, while teams like the Blues and the Reds show that rugby can be played in an exciting way, and winning way.
When the fans start chanting “Don’t kick the ball!” at games, you know your style is being questioned.
The Tahs have defended this on the basis of winning ugly is better than not winning. However, the Tahs aren’t even winning ugly. They’re winning ugly, sometimes. Further, the Reds showed that with the right personnel and coach a team can be turned around in a short time and can play attractive winning rugby.
NSW, with supposedly the best players and resources at its disposal, hasn’t played attractive rugby for a few years now (Ewen was and is a “pragmatic” coach, and up until 2008 he was actually winning ugly so we didn’t mind as much).
Someone on The Roar recently commented that Tahs fans are never happy, and we whinge even when we’re winning in that we aren’t playing the “style” we want. That caused me to think whether this was the case.
In fact, I think Tahs’ fans are quite reasonable in their expectations. We want to be the best Australian team year after year, and to be capable of playing both running and winning rugby.
Essentially, we want to be the Crusaders of Australia. And if they can do it, why can’t we? And even if we were to cut out the running rugby bit, why can’t we be the Bulls of Australian rugby? That is, playing a 10-man style but smashing everyone with it (at least until this year).
Instead, Tahs’ fans are in many ways the long suffering mob of the comp (or at least the Aussie bit). Huge potential, never winning. Sorry people, but we aren’t rugby league’s North Sydney Bears – we’re not going to sit patiently for decades while we watch season after season get wasted.
In fact, the Tahs have a pretty good team at the moment. But as Simon Poidevin, a former NSW and Australian great, wrote in an article in Saturday’s Herald, pulling on a sky blue jersey at the moment seems to involve removing that part of your rugby brain that enables you to play exciting rugby.
We want to see two things: winning and entertaining rugby. If we don’t get the first, the second can often be a sop, especially if it was close.
I suspect many Tahs fans could cope with a team that wasn’t finishing as highly each season if they played more attractive rugby, and held the promise of next year being the year they kicked on to win playing that way (like the Reds had at the end of last year).
Unfortunately, Tahs fans watch this season not liking what they see, and wondering how and why next year is likely to be any better.
Even when we win this year, we think to ourselves, “Is this really going to be enough to beat the Reds and Crusaders of the comp, if we somehow manage to scrape into the semis?”
4. Where’s the passion?
However, the final question is that of passion. And that the Tahs team this year, and often in the past, has seemed not to have the requisite passion. Everything we hear from interviews and “insider” sources says they do. But again perception becomes reality, and it doesn’t look like they are running onto the field ready to die for the jersey which is essentially what every sports fan wants to see (and which many other teams in the comp show).
This was part of why the Tahs got booed after winning against the Cheetahs, they seemed to have given up on themselves and the game.
The galling thing is it is possible to see some players playing with both the skill and the passion that wins games. Phil Waugh (even with the criticism levelled at him on The Roar in certain regards) plays his guts out every game, even with bits dropping off.
Drew Mitchell also is one of the players that was before his unfortunate injury regarded as a player who could hold his head up as having put in every game (and he’s a bloody ex-Queenslander and Force player!).
But when rumours circulate that players have criticised others for not showing enough ticker, or applied the nickname of “Harvey” (for Harvey Norman – no interest) to a teammate, what the fans see on the field begins to be borne out.
Ultimately we want to see 15 blokes busting their guts on the field for their team, just like we’d like to think we’d be doing if the dream of being a professional rugby player had ever descended on our now flabby and former subbies playing carcasses. And when we don’t get it, and we lose, we start to ask where are the blokes that will play that way.
Short answer is they’re called Beau Robinson and now playing for the Reds, but don’t start me on that particular beef of mine…
So there’s a few starter questions to stick in your old kit bag and take along on Thursday.
My final thought is a Chinese curse, that you get what you wish for. If the fans that turn up are provided a chance to say what they think, I expect they will give the Tahs what they want – being a whole lot of detailed feedback (and that won’t be the members’ packs didn’t have a cap in them this year).
The problem is that they are likely to point to the administrators, the coach and the players in turn, raising uncomfortable questions of each of them.
Bay35Pablo
Roar Guru
(wipes away tear) I'm so proud of you all. It's like I was asking the questions myself ... :) http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-union/union-news/fans-savage-fragile-mediocre-waratahs-20110519-1ev71.html
Yikes
Guest
Can't agree with this. I catch the train to central and there are dedicated SFS busses leaving from right outside. You're there in 10 mins.
Glenn Condell
Guest
'It was all summed up for me with Hickey’s off-season comments, that they’d learned their lesson from last year’s semis and planned to have bulkier forwards so they didn’t get blasted off the park by the Saffers.' Bulkier but less mobile and just as brain dead. At least Hickey's honest. In a halftime interview the other week he was asked what the plan for the second half was (this after a dire first 40) and his reply was along the lines of 'well, we have to kick to their end and play the game down there..' It was not exactly death or glory, fight them on the beaches stuff. More like an accountant discussing the end of year financials or something. I know they all talk in cliches, but it was just so Tahs, unfortunately. Good piece Pablo, considered and fair, but with teeth visible.
Johnno
Guest
Yes morre park is the problem for a No reasons and i will say some of them , dont have time to writeiin detail all the other reasonsi don't add to. Geographic location in proximity to rest of sydney. And i live in Paddington and am saying that. Sydney is not just Bond beach.bondi junction, double bay , or paddington. Most of sydney is parramatta and south west, and most of Waratah fans live at north shore, Mosman,chatswood, st leanards, North shore train line Milsons Point to hornsby. Waratahs are starting to be like bling Sydney FC may as well call them east sydney FC lol. And look how sydney treat Sydney FC, like crap, no one attends ccant relate to them. 2) Public Transport Problems SFS is a nightmare to drive and use public transport if you live anywhere other than Paddington , Darlinghurst Woollahra or bondi beach/junction. Even double bay and edgecliff are a pest no direct public transport. If you live in North shore you have to catch train to central then long walk to eddy ava bust stop to catch 380 bus on fri or sat early evening with lots of traffic a nightmare. or drive to SFS on bridge or tunnell traffic, find a car park, or same deal if you come form cronulla drive in or catch train to central then nightmare bus ride. SAME WITH PArramattaa, Penrith OR Campelltown, long way to travel and pest of 2 public transport changes. 3) Public transport Porblem solved with for mor eeasy soloution at other Sydney/ central cost stadiums Stadiums Parramatta Stadium; Every one form anywhere in sydney gets of at Parra then short walk, forget all this catching another bus to be stuck in traffic crap. You dont need to drive you can be catch Chatswood-parra direct or anywhere on north shroe line, or any other trian line in sydney just use 1 train ride or maybe change jsut once like at central to Homebush it is smooth easy access. Same deal at Campelltown stadium just get off at campelltown train station short walk Same deal at blue tongue stadium next to train station same deal at penrith stadium next to train station Same deal even for north sydney oval just catch train to north sydney and have express buses there in 5 min So SFS is a logistical nightmare for all sydney fans except a few east sydney fans. You can go straight direct form chastwood to parra easy Heck play at chatswood oval and more fans would turn up than go to SFS it is just up the road from most tah fans in norht shore suburbs like pymble and roseville. much easier than getting to sfs. From chatswood it would be easier to blue tongue gosford than it would SFS. People are time savvy by nature. You dont want stress or complications in your life and SFS is a stress for most fans. I can tell you if i was your typical 40 year old man from chatswood with 2 kids say 10, and 12 years of age, worked hard all week he last thing i would be bothered to do is kart my kids on friday night or sat night to rugby at SFS and have to face all that changing trains then getitng on bus in traffic nightmare, forget it. Same if i lived anywhere outside of a few suburbs next to moore park. Reality is moore park is a public transport nightmare for most sydneysiders. 3) change stadiums mix them up, is th eproblem not the tahs style of rugby. QLD kick just a smuch as NSW. Qcooper kicks alot trust me if stats are anything to go by. The location is the problem, now tahs have to find a way to wriggle there way out of SFS contract, otherwis ethere stuck in the miud for a few more seasons. And heck maybe have super team based at western sydney or in northern suburbs and redevelop chatswood oval
Yikes
Guest
Doesn't mean he doesn't have an equally valid point though Bay.
sportym
Guest
no way, I enjoy watching the Brumbies loosing, still better then watching the Tahs play, win or loose. I'll watch the AFL if I want to see loads of kicking.
Who Needs Melon
Guest
Lol. Thanks Bay. :)
Damo
Guest
Imagine the boost to the local RU economy and the rabid fan economy too.
Damo
Guest
Bay if these stadium deals are all tied up then we really do have a structural problem. The logic seems to go like this- We need the stadium because we have to pay for it because we had to commit to it to cater for a huge fan base ,which has never been truly passionate and is dwindling fast. In real estate only three things matter - location, location and location. And the Australian ball sport market is a fiercely contested piece of real estate. Again Tahs exec need to consider the concept of ' whatever it takes'
Damo
Guest
Matt beautiful beautiful music to my ears. This team needs to make contact with passionate fans, keep them and increase them. And if it means moving to Dubbo Barraba or Bourke so be it - whatever it takes.
Damo
Guest
Ted beautiful ideas Personally I think a regular base/training camp west of Parramatta could be ideal. A paddock with trestles would have the right atmosphere.to attract some passionate fans. Good beer and maybe a campground to give drinkers an option for safe driving. But the team could travel to a variety of venues like the Crusaders have this year. It has not stopped them from finding form.
Bay35Pablo
Roar Guru
Question 5: With Luke Burgess off to Frogland, and the half back such a crucial spot, HOW THE HELL IS JOSH HOLMES OFF CONTRACT?!?!?!?!?!? http://manly-daily.whereilive.com.au/sport/story/nsw-coach-stops-rats-skipper-from-starting-vital-game/ And, Mr Hickey, why are you dicking with the club sides so much? Clearly Josh is pretty ticked to be making comments like that ....
Damo
Guest
Absolutely mals Homebush is the last place Tahs should be. Concord would be better But I agree the places you mention should be on the table
Bay35Pablo
Roar Guru
You won't get games away from the SFS and Homebush, the current deals tie them up and are worth too much money to the Tahs. Having said that, I like the Empire branding. Let's embrace being the bad guys everyone hates. The team should run out to the Imperial March theme (du du du, du-du-du, du-du-du). Fans in Darrth Vader masks. Kids with light sabers. Gags directed at the Brumbies about being their father . "Nooooo!"
Bay35Pablo
Roar Guru
PeterK, that's changing now. Is going to pretty flat pay from ARU, with major part of payments from state unions. Essentially reversing what it was.
Bay35Pablo
Roar Guru
Chester, good to see you read my comments above about complaints we complain too much ....
chester
Guest
You blokes are pathetic You sit on this website whinging about the Tahs, imploring them to change. Then they hold a public forum to try and get some feedback on what needs to change and guess what you whinge about it. The Tahs need to change that is for sure but if they organisation needs to change then so do the fans. You supposed "fans" need to look at the long suffering reds fans and see what a true fan is.
ted
Guest
Waratahs playing somewhere like Orange / Dubbo / Gosford / Newcastle / Wagga? imagine the boost to the local economy?
cm
Guest
I've posted this on another Roar thread, but it's just as relevant here: It was all summed up for me with Hickey’s off-season comments, that they’d learned their lesson from last year’s semis and planned to have bulkier forwards so they didn’t get blasted off the park by the Saffers. Having put that plan in place, they seemed to forget that just having big forwards would suffice. Meantime the game has moved on so that your No. 7 is now acting as a kind of “third five” to add numbers out wide. Alternatively watching Schalk Burger (admittedly a rare talent) and Scott Higinbotham rampaging on the weekend was salutory as to what you can do with a big forward out wide.
Matt
Guest
From a Kiwi perspective (just clarifying that I'm not, and have never been a 'NSW fan') it just seems like the Tahs have got their whole 'brand' wrong from the board to the playing field. It's not to say that the personel are the problem, it's just when you think of any other team there is usually some positives in the emotional link you make. The Reds: A young, exciting and adventurous team who play a high octane of Rugby and play with a HEAP of passion. That 'brand' is now also including a lot of winning, which will create immense goodwill in future seasons. The Brumbies: Have a sense of the small guys who have achieved big things for Australian Super Rugby. Their clubrooms are lined with photos of true legends of the Australian game. This brand has been tarnished this year by the image of a team overwhelmed by player power, but the Brumbies still conjure images of a supremely confident group of players who are shrewd and organised and therefore capable of winning. You get the feeling that with Jake White coming next year that 2012 could easily see them back at the top of the Australian conference. The Force: The outcasts, being based so far from the East coast population they're literally half way towards being from another country. Fueled (pun intended) by imported talent, but talent that has been moulded into a very good unit on it's day. They are capable of playing great rugby and appear to have an us vs them mentality towards the original 3 Super teams on the East Coast. It's this unique geographical isolation that seems to really define the Force brand, and it seems to also galvanise the supporter base. The Rebels: The Rebels seem to have deliberately formed the foundations of the club in the opposite manner to that of the Force. They have built slowly (not having brought in many young stars) with very strong emphasis on their regional ties. They play off the idea of Melbourne being a city of sporting supporters and have tried wherever possible to forge connections to that fan base. On the field they've mostly played a slower game to fit their older personel but the seem to be the darling of their fan base, who win or lose feel their team has done them proud. The Waratahs: Metaphorically the Tahs seem to represent the Empire from Star Wars. They have more wealth and resources than their opponents and also have an attitude of entitlement with regards to winning because of their resources. Yet the continue to alienate a fanbase that is never proud of what their side is doing. It seems everything they do is seen as a glass half empty scenario and the more they dig the deeper the hole becomes. They don't represent a fresh start and the unknown optimism that accompanies it - Force, Rebels They don't represent a youthful exuberence or joy de vive - Reds They don't represent an historically winning culture (not in the Super Rugby era) - Brumbies The Waratahs brand seems old, tired and losing. I'd wager that many Australian Rugby fans would envisage a 6th Super Rugby team in Western Sydney to represent a whole different image than the current Sydney representatives do. Thinking back to the defunct ARC, the Western Sydney Rams represent the excitement of a fresh start, with young exciting players playing an entertaining and winning brand of Rugby. They are the 3 things that seem to excite sports fans and are the 3 factors that seem to keep the Waratahs from ever being a joy to support. So the question I'd ask is how can the Waratahs rejuvinate their brand? They can't forgo all those years of history, and winning ugly didn't seem to work either. But that still doesn't mean that they can't reinvent themselves and appear as a new incarnation to the fans. I think playing matches out in the Sydney suburbs would be an incredibly smart idea. It's time to give the fans (and the players) something different and fresh to get excited about! Season after season that Tahs play at the SFS with the occasional game at Homebush. Give the players new venues to mix it up, connect the team to the whole region, not just Eastern Sydney. Sydneys suburn, particularly the west represents the growth and youth of the city. The CBD represents the old city and establishment, which permeates the Tahs from top to bottom. Why not play a game at Parramatta Stadium (21,500 capacity) or up at Bluetongue Stadium on the Central Coast (20,000). Centre the match around a festival day, with entertainment for the kids involving the reserve/injured players (or better yet the starting XV guys for an hour or so). Get the local grade teams to play the curtain raiser and host some fundraising dinner afterwards for a local club/charity. Maybe hold some tryouts even, with an Academy Scholarship on the table. With enough promotion it wouldn't be a stretch to get a much bigger crowd than the 15K who turned up at the SFS for the Cheetahs or the 17K who turned up for the Rebels. In fact, the reality is that the Waratahs would have only sold out Parra Stadium once this season (for the big clash against the Reds)! It's time to change the brand and the image of the Tahs. They need to represent something other than the old school East Sydney rugby establishment, even if that's where most of the board and players do come from. The fans don't want to be represented by that image, they want to be represented by something exciting and adventurous.