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I have the sense that the ARU board needs the broom put through it as well, but I don’t have anything to base that on.
The 2011 Rugby World Cup is over. Sure the last weekend still has to play out, but New Zealand will put 50 points on France. And as for Wales versus Australia for third place, no one cares; not even the players. That makes it post-mortem time.
The record of the Wallabies during Deans’ tenure reflects the decidedly average nature of his performance. Deans’ record stands at 54 Tests for 31 wins, 22 losses and one draw for a 57 percent winning ratio.
Supporting statistics reinforce this conclusion:
– Deans’ best winning streak as coach was his first five matches in charge, in 2007.
– Deans has the worst defensive record of any recent Wallaby coach.
– Deans has the worst record against the All Blacks of any recent Wallaby coach.
What has Deans done right?
Well, he did do a very good job of managing generational change within the Wallabies. He identified a lot of good young talent and blooded them at international level.
But Deans is not the guy who can take rough diamonds and mould and polish them into world-beating gems. He’s just the guy that finds them in the rough and cleans off the dirt by starting their training. Someone else needs to take over.
So what has Deans done wrong? Well, in my opinion, that’s a long list.
The most glaring mistake in 2011 is that Deans completely abandoned the style of play he had been instilling in the Wallabies for the previous three years. Deans had been patiently building the Wallabies’ game around fast clean ball controlled by dual-playmakers at 10 and 12 to best utilise the speed and skill of Australia’s outside backs.
In 2010, that plan looked like it was coming together; Australia’s backline was starting to look threatening again.
However, instead of building on this in 2011, Deans decided to abandon it and focus on a defence-oriented crash-ball midfield. The installation of McCabe (a young, slight, hard running outside back from the Brumbies) directly into the Wallaby inside centre position raised a lot of eyebrows.
They turned into howls of outrage as it became evident that passing was not amongst McCabe’s skills. Suddenly the link from the playmakers to the strike power of the outside backs was gone – it is any wonder that in the RWC Australia has managed just one try against top-flight opposition (Ireland, South Africa, New Zealand).
Following on from this came a whole heap of selection blunders. Deans is a poor selector. He persists in selecting his favourite players regardless of form (their poor form or other players’ better form); he has a penchant for putting players out of position and expecting them to perform; and he also seems to have a love affair for players with “utility value” rather than genuine specialists.
Now I understand that some utility players are mandatory, but a full team of them is poor. Jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none describes a lot of the shortcomings of Deans’ Wallabies.
Here are a few selection blunders that got my blood boiling this year:
– Rocky Elsom (overrated barely even scratches the surface of his inadequacies in 2011).
– McCabe at 12 (to round out the indecision in the centres that has seen 16 different centre combinations during Robbie Deans’ time as coach).
– No backup number 7 (every pundit and commentator knew it was a blunder).
– Kepu at loosehead and Alexander at tighthead.
– Nathan Sharpe (not putting him on the park against the All Blacks for his 100th Test in the RWC semi-final is just a dog of a move – and don’t forget the rumour that Deans wanted to drop Sharpe from the squad entirely and take Sitaleki Timani to the RWC).
– Scott Higginbotham (even if you don’t agree he should have started ahead of Elsom, he is still Australia’s best impact player by a long way yet he was massively under-utilised).
– Persisting with mediocre players (the Fainga’a twins, Salesi Ma’afu, Ben McCalman – these guys should all have been branded “not good enough” and tossed to the scrap heap alongside Mark Chisholm, Dean Mumm and Richard Brown).
– Carrying too many injured players (25 percent of the RWC squad was “recovering” from injury when the tournament started – that Palu, Horne and Mitchell didn’t even last a full game before getting re-injured surprised no-one but the Wallabies coaching staff).
The next big mistake was the complete mismanagement of Quade Cooper. Deans does not know how to get good performances out of Cooper. I don’t know either, but it is clear that Ewen Mackenzie does, because Cooper in a Reds jersey is vastly different from Cooper in a Wallaby jersey.
Part of the problem I am certain was Deans’ refusal to give Cooper a secondary playmaker (when every rugby journalist in Australia wrote pieces calling for Barnes, Deans dug his heels in and selected McCabe).
Here I must also take a moment to say that it was a colossal error to not force Cooper to defend at 10 (and instead deprive the Wallabies of Beale’s counter-attacking prowess).
Finally, my biggest gripe with Deans (yes, the preceding points are all small potatoes) is his tactical… how do I say this nicely… blunders/ineptitude/stupidity.
Deans’ Wallabies are characterised by a look of collective confusion. They don’t seem to know what they’re doing; it’s chuck the ball and see. There is no concerted effort to exploit a perceived or identified weakness in the opposition, nor to avoid playing to the opposition’s strengths.
I am not certain if there is a game plan when they take the field, but there certainly isn’t any secondary plan if the first isn’t working. Deans’ “play what is in front of you” attitude doesn’t work at the faster pace and in the compressed space of Test rugby.
Then there is the use of the bench. Or lack of use of the bench. Deans is terrible at tactical substitutions. He is clearly of the school of thought that rugby matches are won by 15 men. That is rarely true; games are won by 20-22 men.
Deans selects and treats his bench like injury cover. The bench should be a weapon. The term “impact player” exists for a reason. At least five of the bench should be on the field by minute 65 (this gives them enough time to make that impact).
Intelligent use of the bench creates momentum shifts. It can either halt the slide against you by introducing a new element into the equation, or provide for sustained physicality and pressure by replacing tiring legs with fresh ones. Deans does not understand this.
I told you it was a long list…
So Deans has a contract extension to the end of 2013 and the end of the British and Irish Lions tour to Australia. So what? Contracts can always be torn up and broken; it just depends on what the penalty clauses say.
I firmly believe that Deans and his coaching staff are not up to the job. The ultimate test of any coach is the ability to get the best from the group of players he is coaching and quite clearly Deans has not been able to get the Wallabies to perform.
It’s time for a change.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.