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Last year, Professor Deepak Malhortra gave a speech to graduating MBA students from Harvard Business School on the concepts of tragedy and genius.
It’s almost an hour long, but if you have time, I think you’ll find this to be one of the most enlightening and inspiring talks you’ll ever hear.
For those who can’t be bothered, I’ll attempt to summarise a key point in Professor Malhortra’s speech in relation to tragedy.
In essence he defines tragedy as the difference, distance or gap between how happy you could, would or should be, and how happy you are.
The greater is the disparity between potential and reality, the greater the tragedy.
In the context of our beloved Wallabies, this I think, is what ultimately frustrates most of the fans, including myself.
The gap between where we could be and where we’ve ended up in recent times has been too large more often than not.
I’d argue we’ve only really played well against South Africa and Wales – one has a coach who is renowned for poor communication and the other renowned personal selection bias, harbouring “favourites” at the expense of performance or form.
Sound familiar?
On the other side of the ledger, we’ve underperformed against New Zealand, Samoa, Scotland and Ireland. In the last five years, we’ve only won four games out of 23 against these teams combined.
Granted, most of these losses were against New Zealand, and the Kiwis have had an exceptional team during this period, but is 3 wins from 18 really a fair reflection of the Wallabies’ potential? I’d argue it isn’t, and suggest you’d have to be quite cynical to disagree.
I’m not saying the Wallabies could or should have actually won the Bledisloe in the last five years, but six or seven wins out of 18 would have been more reflective of our ability than three.
It is tragic that we haven’t done better, tragic that we’ve lost 2/2 against Scotland, 1/1 against Samoa and only managed one win and a draw against Ireland in out last three outings.
It’s tragic that we didn’t at least make it to the final of the rugby World Cup in 2011 given the favourable draw.
The gap between where we could be and where we are is larger than it should be.
Sure, we’ve had some injuries here and there, but on the whole we’ve stagnated, particularly over the last 3 years, and failed to perform consistently anywhere near our potential, leaving many people wondering if this great “potential” is a myth?
It isn’t.
We have some outstanding talent – David Pocock, Will Genia and Israel Folau would walk into any Test team in world rugby, and very few countries would reject the services of James Horwill, Quade Cooper, Michael Hooper, Liam Gill, Scott Higginbotham, James O’Connor (not at fly-half though!), Digby Ioane, Kurtley Beale or Adam Ashley-Cooper.
These are all very, very good rugby players, arguably up there with the best in the world in their respective positions (in JOC’s case, his “normal” position).
If we can’t string better performances together with that sort of talent, the ARU really needs to get to the heart of what is the common denominator in all of this tragedy?
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.