Every Marine is a rifleman: Lessons for Australian rugby

There is a wonderful quote from Lt. General Alfred M Gray, the man brought in to reform the United States Marine Corps in 1987.

‘Every Marine is, first and foremost, a rifleman. All other conditions are secondary.’

What he meant was that if you can’t get the basic skills right, you will fail on the battlefield.

His quote contains a second powerful insight – if you don’t know what your purpose is, you will lose to adversaries who do.

A third insight? Everyone is a rifleman. No one is more important than anyone else. Humility is important. Ultimately, we are servants of something larger than ourselves.

All of these insights apply to Australian rugby in 2016.

Take core skills. We aren’t executing the basics well under pressure, on the battlefield. Lineouts, catching, passing, tackling, kicking – you name it. The simple things are going awry in the fog of war. You might get away with it against minor rugby nations but against the mighty All Blacks? We are lambs to the slaughter.

Now consider Gray’s insight about purpose. There was a quiet sense of purpose in the World Cup squad last year – our adversaries knew it, respected it and feared it. The guys understood the objective and the reason they were there. Where has it gone- and why? I have no doubt the players passionately want to win. But out on the field – again, under pressure – their resilience seems to be AWOL.

Skills and purpose. The All Blacks have mastery of both. It is in their DNA. Their training camp is famous for preparing the team to win under pressure. There is a relentless focus on technique, core skills and playing hard matches against determined local opposition.

Each player knows that it is his personal pride on the line when he plays in that famous jersey. And the elite players play a lot of rugby. Club, Super 18 and Test. No short cuts allowed.

What of the Wallabies? They had a four-week training camp prior to this series. Apparently they didn’t play one full game of rugby union, against quality opposition, the whole time. In four entire weeks. No Super 18. No club rugby.

Rather, the focus was on opposed sessions of ‘hybrid rugby’ against NRL sides such as the Sydney Roosters. Hybrid rugby? Excuse me?

The result on the battlefield against a rampant All Blacks? Chaos, panic and errors. The lads seemed confused. We were unable to do the simple things right, under pressure. We paid a heavy price. Twice.

Don’t get me wrong. Sure, mistakes are being made. But they can be fixed. The problem is not in our coaches and players. Cheika is a fine man, just the right person to take us forward and a proven great coach. However, he is on a learning curve and needs time. And forget this defeatist talk that we don’t have depth. We have the troops to be the best in the world.

Cheika, Larkham, Grey and Ledesma want to craft the Australian team into a feared attacking weapon. That’s all to the good, but nothing will happen if the guys keep losing clarity in the fog of war. Hopefully Mick Byrne, the Aussie who took the All Black skills set to a new level, will make a difference soon.

No, the problem lies elsewhere. It’s far too easy to blame the coaches and the players. The problem in Australian rugby is more fundamental than that. We have deep cultural problems, starting at the top. Which brings us to the ARU.

Lt Gen Gray knew, as the All Blacks do, that powerful cultures come from a mastery of basic skills, executed with purpose, humility and service. But servant leadership is critical. Gray wasn’t a polished insider, but a battle hardened, rough soldier. When he took over the USMC, one of the first things he did was clean out a leadership that had become self-serving, detached and arrogant.

He replaced the leadership with people who understood what being a Marine was all about – who could speak the language of real soldiers, the history and the purpose of the Corps.

He knew that a fish rots from the head.

It is legitimate to question if the ARU Board is providing us with effective leadership. My opinion is that they are not. It comes down to what they understand rugby is, as well as their role.

At the end of the day, the ARU views rugby as a profit-loss business, with the ARU at the centre of the game. They do not see rugby as a tribal game, with the players and passionate fans at the centre. The ARU consider their primary role, above all else, is to make the game profitable. World Cup and Bledisloe success are only useful because they produce more money for the ARU. If they didn’t, they would not be considered important. Money, above all, equals success.

It makes sense. Take the board members. These are in the main wealthy corporate people, private schooled, part of the same network – perhaps talented business people, but not rugby people. For them, the highlight of the rugby calendar is the day they get to sign the audited ARU annual report.

Some of these people have never handled a rugby ball. Bizarrely, one of them is a Kiwi. No rugby women. No rugby players reps. No grassroots reps. Two veteran ex-Wallabies, yes, but let’s just say they’ve spent more time in board rooms than on rugby fields of late.

There are no rugby people, just ARU people. So it’s not a surprise that the main focus of the ARU is – you guessed it – the ARU.

Everywhere you look, the numbers tell the real story. The CEO is paid over $700,000 a year – more than 25 per cent of the entire sum allocated to grassroots rugby clubs. Somehow the ARU costs over $17 million to operate, but only $14 million is given to our professional players. We hear of ARU board members flying first class and staying in luxury hotels.

Everything seems up for sale. They even sold off the name of our Test team – the Wallabies – to Qantas, for crying out loud.

If this approach was producing results, you might argue it was worth it. But things are slipping. The player base is declining, fans are deserting the game and Australia is losing at Super Rugby and Test level. With such a record of failure, you would expect some humility and change at HQ.

We get denial, evasion and tantrums. We also get the soporific language of corporate Australia – the ARU drones on about ‘diversity’, ‘pathways’, ‘branding’, ‘long term strategic vision’ – that is meaningful to those who speak it, but makes little sense for those who don’t.

Most of us are taught to seek to learn from others when we might be going wrong. But the ARU does not listen. It does not consult. It hectors, patronises and preaches. The message from the ARU to the players and Cheika? Don’t forget who runs the show. We are the most important group in Australian rugby, not you lot. You are part of a sponsorship and marketing machine, nothing more.

As for the fans and the grassroots? Forget it. There was no ARU presence at Sydney’s recent Shute Shield Final. No surprise. The ARU have long said that we are irrelevant.

This is not servant leadership, but arrogance and elitism. It is getting worse. And it is taking our game down the wrong road.

Our players are among the most gifted in the world. With Cheika at the helm and a new focus on executing basic skills under pressure, we will see rapid improvements. But until we get the culture right, starting at the very top, Australian rugby will continue to be confused about its purpose – and less than the sum of its parts.