SPIRO: Drop the Giteau Rule for the 2016 Grand Slam Wallabies tour

Last Friday, the ARU made an important announcement for the near future of the Wallabies and, in the long term, for the team’s winning chances in the 2019 Rugby World Cup tournament in Japan.

The announcement? “Wallabies to embark on historic 10th Grand Slam Tour in 2016.”

The media release pointed out that the only Grand Slam triumph achieved by the Wallabies was the splendid 1984 side that was captained by Andrew Slack and coached by Alan Jones and Alec Evans.

Mark Ella scored a try in each of the Grand Slam victories and the Wallabies scrum, anchored by the massive Tommy Lawton, monstered the Wales pack for a historic push-over try.

That combination of back line genius and skill and forward aggression and technique in the 1984 side – arguably one of the top three Wallabies sides ever – is what Michael Cheika should be looking for in his 2016 Wallabies in the United Kingdom.

The ARU points out that the Wallabies have made nine Grand Slam challenges, with the 1984 side being the only touring team to achieve the feat.

The last attempt was in 2013. England spoiled the challenge by defeating the Wallabies in the opening Test of the Grand Slam. The Wallabies then went on to defeat Italy, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Close but, as they say in Cuba, no cigar.

This time the Grand Slam starts against Wales (5 November 2016), a side the Wallabies defeated in a crucial 2015 Rugby World Cup pool round Test.

Then comes Scotland (12 November 2016) who were narrowly defeated, by one point in fact, in the 2015 Rugby World Cup quarter-final.

France (19 November 2016) is not a Grand Slam Test and is followed by the last two Grand Slam Tests, Ireland (26 November 2016) and England (3 December 2016).

It is very important that Michael Cheika disregard the Giteau Rule in selecting his side for this 2016 tour. The rule allows the Wallabies coach to select a player who has played 60 Tests over seven years for the Wallabies (60/7) for the touring side, even if he is not playing Super Rugby for an Australian franchise.

The rule was specifically brought in by the ARU because Cheika insisted on it for the 2015 Rugby World Cup tournament. He wanted Matt Giteau to be an essential part of the Wallabies starting side, at inside centre. He also used the rule to bring Drew Mitchell into the side.

I would argue that while both these players, Giteau and Mitchell (after a horror start to the tournament) played well, neither was so outstanding that the players they displaced, Matt Toomua/Kurtley Beale and Henry Speight/Joe Tomane, would not have performed equally as well.

With the latest loss of a player to European rugby like Will Genia who qualifies under the Giteau Rule, there could remain the temptation for Cheika to go for an older, experienced player on the Grand Slam tour rather than blooding a talented youngster.

And when the likes of David Pocock go to play overseas as he has strongly hinted, there will be even more pressure on Cheika and from Cheika himself to include him in touring Wallabies sides.

There are many reasons why this sort of direction is a wrong road for Australian rugby.

First, Australian rugby owes it to its SANZAR partners and the promoters of Super Rugby to encourage its best talent to stay here. The Giteau Law encourages, rather than discourages, players like Genia to take the huge money offers available in France while still staying in the frame for Wallabies selection.

And remember, a youngish player like Michael Hooper, who should be a long-established Wallabies captain by RWC 2019, will be eligible for selection dispensation under the Giteau Rule within a year or so. Surely, a player like Hooper should not be encouraged to play overseas for the best years of his career. The Giteau Rule does this.

Second, players do not improve playing out of the Super Rugby tournament. Or, to put in slightly differently, their skill levels and pace are not intensified by playing in Europe. It took Drew Mitchell, for instance, weeks of hard slog training to come up to the physical mark required of a Wallabies winger.

Third, selecting players from outside of their home union has not helped the Springboks to win a Rugby World Cup tournament or the Rugby Championship.

On the other hand, the All Blacks have had great success in the last five years, with two Rugby World Cup titles, with their policy of only selecting players competing in that season’s Super Rugby tournament.

The All Blacks selectors are so tough on this principle they discarded Charles Piutau, an obvious selection to cover the wing, fullback and centre positions, because he had signed up, as a young player, to play the next three years in Ireland.

A first year All Black, Nehe Milner-Skudder, who will certainly stay on in New Zealand until 2019, at least, was selected instead. The rest is history.

This consideration of rewarding players who stay on in Australia with Wallabiesexclusivity is most important. The reason for this is that Cheika does not seem to be a great encourager of new talent.

His Rugby World Cup squad, instance, had only one new 2015 Wallaby, a prop originally from New Zealand. It was stacked with players who started their careers with Robbie Deans.

Incidentally, when Phil Kearns ignorantly goes on and on about how “toxic” the Deans era was in comparison with Cheika’s reign, why doesn’t he tell us the players that Cheika has actually developed!

The only player that comes to mind is Will Skelton. And, of course, he did not make it through the 2015 Rugby World Cup tournament.

There is another reason, moreover, why Cheika should look to fast-forwarding young talent into the Wallabies as soon as possible. He needs to freshen up what was an ageing (older even than the All Blacks with all their veterans) Wallabies squad that took the field in the Rugby World Cup 2015 final.

The point about losing finalists in Rugby World Cup tournaments is that, despite the talk from rugby journalists about hopeful signs for the future, these teams do not go on to the next final. But winning sides in Rugby World Cup 1999, Rugby World Cup 2003, Rugby World Cup 2011 have gone to the finals, with the 2011 winner also winning Rugby World Cup 2015.

What this tells us is that the Wallabies need more rebuilding than the All Blacks, even though the World Cup champions are losing six of their greatest players ever.

And the best way for Cheika to start this rebuilding is to select his 2016 Wallabies only from players in the Super Rugby tournament, and from a generation of talented, youngish players he over-looked for his 2015 Wallaby squad.

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The one thing that will be certain on the 2016 Grand Slam tour is that England, the last Test of the slam, will not have Stuart Lancaster coaching the side for the Twickenham showdown.

Virtually every coach in world rugby has been touted in some forum or another as having a claim on the job.

Here are some of the names: Michael Cheika (yes, I know this doesn’t make sense but this hasn’t stop the speculation), Robbie Deans (an appointment that would make some sense), Nick Mallett, Eddie Jones, Graham Henry, Wayne Smith, Steve Hansen, Vern Cotter, Joe Schmidt and Jake White, who is virtually begging for the job.

For the last two weeks it has seemed, to me at least, that Warren Gatland will be Lancaster’s successor. Why? Because the Wales Rugby Union has signaled that they would accept a multi-million dollar pay-out for Gatland to get out of his Wales contract.

Gatland has also stated his willingness for this to happen, if he is allowed his own staff and “if the money is right.”

I don’t know what to make, therefore, about his latest statement that he is “not interested” in the England coaching job.

The Rugby Football Union has loads of money to buy a solution to their coaching problems. They also have a management that is almost on its own, even in rugby circles, for incompetence and a stunning lack of understanding of elementary truths about running a rugby franchise.

It will be interesting to see how this combination of pots of money and lots of incompetency by the officials will work out. Will anyone of quality be prepared to take up the poison chalice?

Or will Jake White be the only candidate available?

Ian Ritchie, the chief executive of the RFU, put Lancaster into the coaching job. He then gave him a six-year extension last year. Ritchie said he would take “responsibility” for the appointment and extension of the Lancaster regime.

Now Ritchie has set up a review that has no remit to look at his own role in England’s abject failure as the only host country not to make the finals. And, astonishingly, Ritchie is in sole charge of selecting the new coach.

How Ritchie can remain in his job remains an indictment on the officials who run the RFU.

As Sir Clive Woodward, the charismatic coach of England’s Rugby World Cup 2003 champions, states: “We have spent the past four years congratulating ourselves on the direction we have been heading, but the truth is we have marched confidently into a total mess.”

“We are the laughing stock of not only world rugby but also sport and business.”

For several of these years of mismanagement, the chairman of RFU has been Bill Beaumont.

It is hardly believable that Beaumont is almost certain to become the next chairman of World Rugby. You would have thought that someone involved in the RFU’s mismanagement would not even get to the starting gate of running World Rugby.

To make matters worse from an Australian perspective, a crucial casting vote in Beaumont’s favour, against the current World Rugby chairman Frenchman Bernard Lapasset, will be made by the ARU chairman Michael Hawker.

Why would anyone in their right mind want to inject the English rugby disease into World Rugby? Is a future World Rugby job for a mate part of this Hawker-Beaumont deal?