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In accepting the invitation to write about Australian rugby in general and the Wallabies in particular, it is necessary to traverse what appears to be forbidden territory.
Rugby fans around the country are constantly disappointed about the performance of Australian rugby and yet they fully understand the reasons for their disappointment.
What they don’t understand is why such commonsense explanations for poor performance are never forthcoming.
Indeed, it appears as though those whose responsibility it is to comment on the game merely seem to be apologists for what the supporter has to endure.
One of the things you have to do, in the modern game in particular, is to make the turnstiles turn.
That means there has to be a reason for people to attend and a reason for them to come back.
It means that they have to be excited by what they see and happy to tell their friends and others about what they have seen.
This way you build the interest in, and profile of, the game.
Now sadly, that’s not happening; indeed, the opposite is happening.
People are voting with their feet and in their thousands and thousands staying away.
Surely the Super Rugby table tells the story: the Brumbies are in third place on 44 points, having won 7 matches out of 11.
You then have to go down to the Queensland side who have won 7 matches out of 12, which is way adrift of the South African leaders the Stormers.
(How I hate these names. I don’t know why Queensland can’t be called Queensland and New South Wales called New South Wales.)
But that apart, Melbourne have won 4 out of 11, NSW have won 4 out of 12, Perth have won 2 out of 12.
Surely there’s a story staring us in the face, unless we’re prepared to believe that we don’t have any Rugby players and that argument is a palpable nonsense.
NSW seem now hopelessly out of contention for the Super Rugby finals.
It’s what you do with the ball in rugby that counts and that’s where Australian rugby comes completely unstuck.
With the exception of the ACT who are coached by a South African, who has made a very significant impact on that side, all of these teams have forwards forever in the back line.
Yet the role of a forward pack is to get the opposition forwards out of the back line.
How on earth could Berrick Barnes or Adam Ashley-Cooper or anyone else attack when they only get the ball after forwards, out of position in the back line, have themselves run the ball at the gain line?
Then we have this anomalous notion of pick and drive which means half the team are on the ground for most of the time.
It’s an unseemly spectacle, there’s no attacking Rugby, we don’t play the width of the field and when the attempt to go wide is implemented, there are forwards in the way.
The reality is NSW, for example, have the players. That’s a pretty simple statement of the obvious.
But we’re playing the wrong brand of football.
Whose fault is that?
The coaches.
Never has rugby had so many coaches and never have we had such awful results.
I don’t know what a head coach does if he doesn’t coach, but he seems to have a backs coach and a forwards coach and a tactical coach and a skills coach and a throwing coach and a kicking coach.
No wonder the players are confused.
And if you talk to the players, as I do, they admit to their confusion.
The national coaching structure is a mess.
The World Cup result was diabolically awful.
I sometimes get the impression that one of the reasons the players are doing poorly and playing poorly is that the coaches haven’t themselves got a clue of how they should be playing.
We have all these game plans and strategies and tactical talks, but it’s the same every week.
Plan A seems to be to kick the ball, plan B seems to be kick the ball more often.
John O’Neill and his team have to concede that they’re presiding over failure.
They don’t want to admit to that.
But how else do we interpret the Super Rugby ladder when the Australian teams, boasting some of the finest players in the world, out of a competition of 15 are currently sitting at 3rd, 8th, 10th, 11th and 13th.
But, of course, when it comes to appointing coaches, the people who are appointing coaches have never coached themselves.
Make no mistake, we have the talent, we’re awash with talent.
But it’s increasingly becoming very frustrated because the concerns of the players and of the supporters are not being heard.
And there’s no one, it seems, prepared to represent those concerns.
And anyway, the people to whom they’d be represented would take no notice for the very simple reason, they know it all, don’t they.
The Roar invited Alan Jones, AO, to write a Guest Column for The Roar about his views on the current Wallabies team. Jones was the Wallabies coach between 1984-87 and is currently Australia’s top rating breakfast announcer on radio station 2GB
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.