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When Robbie Deans looks back on his Wallaby coaching career since 2008, James O’Connor, Kurtley Beale, and Quade Cooper, will stand out.
Not for the brilliant play they were capable of, but for abusing the coveted gold jersey.
Deans gave them far too much rope. He saw the three amigos as match-winners and was prepared to suffer their shortcomings.
The rope eventually hung the likeable Kiwi.
Step into the coaching breach Ewen McKenzie, who will never ever suffer fools.
He was the Wallabies’ most capped prop at the time with 51, he knows what it takes to pull on that gold jersey, and the sacrifices that must be made.
That’s not sleeping in and missing the team bus for training as O’Connor and Beale did.
Nor staying out until all hours prior to the Melbourne Test against the Lions, and in the aftermath of the 41-16 shellacking last Saturday night.
Nor calling the Wallaby team “toxic”, as Cooper did.
The equation is very simple: It’s shape-up, or ship-out time.
O’Connor is in the worst predicament of the three, all of his own making. The Rebels have sacked him for next season and the Waratahs, Brumbies and even his home state Reds don’t want him.
That leaves just the Force, or off overseas to end his Wallaby days.
For all his faults, O’Connor does appear to want the Wallaby jersey although you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise.
But until he shows he genuinely cherishes the jersey instead of abusing it, he will end up being a successful Kamikaze pilot.
McKenzie said yesterday he has only spoken to O’Connor twice in his life. There will be a third very shortly, and it will be very blunt and right to the point.
Beale is a complex character, as well as being an outstanding talent.
He never should have signed with the Rebels for two reasons – he’s a Waratah to the marrow of his bones, with his whole family structure in Sydney, and O’Connor was in Melbourne.
The latter a bad call, bad mix.
There’s no doubt Michael Cheika wants Beale back home, and you can count on the Waratah coach keeping Beale under a tight rein.
Cooper is in a very different category to the other two.
There’s no way he would ever say, or do, anything out of place under McKenzie. Cooper knows where his bread is buttered, and would never dream of ‘biting the hand that feedeth’.
Having said all that, the three amigos are a bad mix. Two of them together is Trouble with a capital T – three a potential disaster.
And senior Wallabies have had a gut-full of their antics disrupting team harmony.
Affable Robbie Deans couldn’t control the amigos, but McKenzie will as a no-nonsense coach.
Will the three amigos get the message in a hurry?
They have two choices – none and Buckley’s – of ever being a Wallaby again if they don’t.