Australia must stop selecting players out of position

With traditions and laws approaching perfection over a 171-year history, even World Rugby, the game’s supercilious governing body seems to appreciate that it’s the custodian of something rather special.

Laws of the game are treated with great reverence, with clear focus on protecting the ‘spirit’ of rugby. Any areas of concern are reviewed like clockwork, a methodical process of consultation, variation, testing and, ultimately, integration.

Even in my relatively short lifetime, the laws of rugby have changed quite a bit. Few would argue these changes have not been for the better; our game is now faster, safer and more entertaining for viewers than ever before.

Rugby union positions too, in the modern game are rather specific things. Wisdom of thousands of coaches, tempered by the furnace elite competition, has seen the purpose of each man on the field refined to a fine art.

One of the unique aspects of rugby union, when compared to our nation’s other major football codes, is just how much the job descriptions from one position on the field to another. No two are the same.

Only a hooker throws the line out. Only a halfback tends to pass from the ground. Only some forwards jump in lineouts, but all have to scrum. And the backs, in to say thank you to the forwards for allowing them to swan around and keep fancy haircuts intact have to stay back a practice a little longer to learn how to kick.

Having played almost every position on a rugby field at one time or another, most very poorly, I can say with some authority that they have pretty much nothing in common.

Even positions a casual fan may think are broadly the same are in fact vastly different in terms of requisite skills, conditioning and strategic importance. Flankers for example, there are two of them, they both hang off the side of the scrum and pretend to push so they must be more or less the same then. Right?

No, not really.

An openside flanker, in jersey #7, must be a master of the breakdown. Put simply, his role is to be first to the ruck to defend his team’s ball in attack and again in defense to disrupt the ball of the opposition.

Number 6, the blindside, will generally not be first to a ruck but is expected to attend more often and be heavily physical when he does. He will also be expected to be a powerful ball carrier and to be tall enough to jump in the lineout – duties his counterpart would generally be excused from.

Five-time New York Times best selling author and staff writer for the New Yorker Malcolm Gladwell examined, in his third book Outliers, what it might take to develop such specialised skills at an elite level. An often-stated theory now referred to as the 10,000-hour rule.

Basically speaking, the rule suggest that becoming “world-class” at any skill one requires 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. Numerous studies have sought to discredit the 10,000 rule since, but they are really missing the point.

Gladwell’s hypothesis was never intended or presented as a scientific constant. Better to think of it as an observation of success, a model, a simple way in which we might go about explaining a complex concept to ourselves.

Only 23 of roughly 24,000,000 people in Australia make it to the match day squad, making them in the top 0.000096 per cent of the nation. Putting that in perspective that’s, roughly, one tenth of one thousandth of one percent of the population. You’re more likely, in any given year, to die by falling off a chair.

World-class by any measure, each of our internationals have without doubt put in the metaphorical 10,000 hours. However, an important distinction to make is that their 10,000 hours will not so much have been spent mastering rugby as mastering the complexities of their chosen position.

Of course, there are skills common amongst positions. Basic catching and passing, tackling and all manner of breakdown play come to mind but even then the frequency and ability each player is expected to undertake each skill with varies greatly.

Fitness too is transferable; however, even then, some positions need to be fitter than others, some stronger, some faster than others and the complexities go on.

Particularly since the advent of the professional era, rugby union is plagued with examples of great players who have tried to change position with sub-par results.

Neither Lote Tuqiri nor George North managed to play a convincing game at outside centre when given the opportunity to shift from the wing. Israel Folau, I suspect, would join this list if he were to try at Test level – his defensive play simply isn’t good enough.

Many elite flankers too have tried to switch sides of the scrum without success; Phil Waugh and Chris Robshaw come to mind. Even the great Ritchie McCaw never looked quite at home when he shifted for 6 for the Crusaders so understudy and heir-apparent Sam Cane was able to better practice his craft.

But perhaps the worst example of what can happen to a player when forced out of position is the indignity suffered by former Springboks captain John Smit a few years back when he was moved between incompatible positions from hooker and prop.

Smit, a proud South African front rower and one of the world’s best hookers at the time, would be comprehensively out-scrummed for what turned out to be quite a few games at prop. Though he got (marginally) better with time, his career never really returned to earlier heights when he after that point.

Australia has become very fond of fielding players out of position of late.

By my count at least five of our starting 15 are not in their best position. If you count Israel Folau, who hasn’t done anything at fullback to suggest he offers more than he did on the wing that number would become six.

Allan Alaalaltoa on the bench should also be counted here. Nominated as required under the laws as a specialist tighthead prop, the young Samoan spent most of his career on the other side of the scrum playing loosehead.

All of this brings me to my question, if the very laws that govern rugby acknowledge the specialist nature of the fifteen positions why won’t Michael Cheika’s with his selections?

It astounds me how routinely players who have worked their whole lives to obtain an elite skill set are asked to shuffle position and play away from their strengths for the first time on the game’s biggest stage.

Is it not sensible to assume that doing this at a world class level, a fiendishly difficult task, may take another ‘10,000’ hours? Or at least more than one week to adjust between matches?

What’s worse, the players are being asked to do this against teams ranked in the top five in the world while many of the the current player/position mismatches could be resolved without dramatic change to on-field personnel.

Either Samu Kerevi or Reece Hodge could switch to inside center to relieve Bernard Foley, with all three currently being away from their preferred position.

David Pocock should probably be restored to his natural number 7 as while he has done no wrong at 8, one can’t help but feel he has more still to give.

And I know it’s not popular to say these things but Dayne Haylett-Petty should swap with Israel Folau and go to fullback. Not only would this limit the impact of Folau’s weak tactical kicking, but it might help Haylett-Petty get his defensive positioning right as well.

Many international teams have long and strange histories of trying to “promote” star wingers to other positions as if it would somehow allow them to contribute more. Israel Folau, George North and Bryan Habana have all fallen victim to this faulty thinking.

World champions New Zealand tend not to do this, having a respect for the value of an elite winger. It’s hard to imagine taking Jonah Lomu, or Julian Savea and thinking that they might get more out of them by moving them somewhere else. After all, wingers score all the tries and yet Australia continues to do this.

Michael Cheika seemed guided by these principles earlier in his coaching career. His first season with NSW, which culminated in a premiership was defined by sound selection policy. Players strong in their position first, where there is no obvious choice recruit someone from elsewhere.

However, with the passage of time or perhaps extraordinary pressure associated with selecting at the highest level his focus in this area seems to have faded.

Most concerning about this tendency to select players out of position, it keeps Australia’s playing stocks to the group who are more or less already seen as being of ‘test quality’. That’s fine except it is keeping some of Australia’s most exciting prospects up in the stands.

Players like Kyle Godwin, Lopeti Timani, Nick Stirzaker come to mind as having deserved a chance at some point in the past two years. Taquele Naiyavoro too has done nothing wrong with very limited opportunity.

Others have managed to bust through, with the most promising being Dayne Haylett-Petty and Adam Coleman, while Rory Arnold seems to keep getting better. I like too what we’ve seen from youngsters Reece Hodge and Allan Alaalatoa, both young of whom are full of energy and seem unphased by the increased intensity.

Hodge, in a somewhat unfair way has spent all his time in Wallaby gold including his first test start on the wing, despite the team being short of expertise in Hodge’s first choice number 12 jersey.

This too has implications. Many players only get one or two chances to prove their mettle at test level and for that task to be made more difficult still for rookies Hodge and Alaalatoa is a little bit cruel.

I’m not saying it would have made the difference against New Zealand. However, as Archilochus said “we don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training”. Playing out of position and ‘away from your training’ against world’s best is unlikely to help the situation.

Journalists’ in rugby, from time to time, have the opportunity to pass a message to the top. If I had the opportunity, it would be the inclusion of something like this in the Australian Selection policy:

“Rugby players are, with reference to their positions, specialists not generalists. Wherever possible, and certainly when a player is on debut each should be selected in his or her own specialist position. Specifically, that means that the position where he or she has played either most first class rugby, or played at the highest standard in the past.

Exceptions from this are to be carefully considered on a case-by-case basis and only when of there is a clear and balanced benefit to the team as a whole. Only in such cases should a player being started out of position be considered and any such decision should be scrutinised regularly.”

Because while it might not have made the difference against New Zealand it almost did against South Africa and may do yet, later in the season.

Losing six in a row has been tough, but in truth all of those games have been against New Zealand and England, arguably the two best teams in the world right now.

Australia still have a genuine claim to being the 3rd in the World Rankings, but to convince us they’ve earned that title they’ll need to rally in the Rugby Championship and give a historic Grand Slam tour a real shake as well.

And if they can find some form, and best stay atop the Europeans they’ll be rewarded with a poetic shot at redemption; with their last game of the season against England at Twickenham.

Motivation doesn’t get much better than that and only time will tell if they can do it, but as it stands they have a long, long way to go.