I don’t know who the new Wallabies coach will be, and I don’t know who it should be. Maybe it will be this guy Dave Rennie. Maybe it will be this other guy Eddie Jones.
Who knows, maybe they’ll go back to the glorious past and choose Eddie’s famous grandfather, Alan.
Personally, the best rugby coach I’ve ever seen is early 1990s Bob Dwyer, but whether Raelene Castle will be willing to take a punt both on a coach who made his name in the amateur era, and untested time travel technology, is uncertain.
The point is, I have no idea. I’m not privy enough to inside information to know, and I’m not expert enough in coaching to judge.
But I do know one thing about the new Wallabies coach, something inevitable and irrefutable.
Whoever the new coach is will be either a lunatic or a moron, and probably both.
How do I know this? Because I’ve been watching the Wallabies over the last 15 years, and nobody who is in possession of all the standard mental faculties of an adult human being could possibly wish to coach them.
Seeking out the best possible man to coach Australia’s rugby union team is like seeking out the best possible man to set himself on fire and run nude through a state funeral: you may get many enthusiastic applicants, but you won’t get any whose judgment can be described as sound.
What would a job ad for a Wallaby coach look like? “Wanted: obsessive workaholic with no sense of perspective to spend several years attempting to defy reality. Must enjoy being constantly abused in public and stomach ulcers.”
Giving good consolatory hugs is a bonus. (Photo by Dan Mullan/Getty Images)
There is no way anyone with any knowledge of Australian rugby could think that the job will bring anything but prolonged and relentless pain, so the only people who will ever put their hands up either have no knowledge of Australian rugby, or are peculiarly dedicated masochists.
I’ve no idea which of these applies to Michael Cheika, but his press conferences never suggested a man especially keen to avoid punishment.
It’d be bad enough if the job was just coaching the players. Getting a group of men together who have spent most of their lives playing rugby, and are considered the best in the whole country at playing rugby, and finding that your first order of business is teaching them how to catch a ball, is a dispiriting experience.
Even worse must be finding that four years of detailed explanations of the laws of time and space have been insufficient to teach grown adults the principle that if you’re standing still five metres behind the advantage line when you catch the ball, the defence is going to get to you before you reach that line.
How many years of watching lumpen front-rowers acting as tackling bags can a man stand before his senses desert him?
Applicants for the Wallabies coaching job will presumably be asked to present their ideas on tactics and strategy to the board, although it will also be a requirement of the position that the successful applicant have the capacity to accept with phlegmatic calm the fact that their tactics and strategy will never be put into practice.
They are coaching the Wallabies. The team is never going to progress past a gameplan of ‘try not to wet yourself when the black jumpers appear in front of you’.
Fair play though, that appeared to be Ireland’s gameplan as well. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
Of course, some people might think the team plays this way because of the coach, but if that’s true, it’s a pretty huge coincidence that the last four Australian coaches have all subscribed to the Blind Panic school of rugby tactics and believed that adapting play to changing circumstances is for sissies.
As I say, if the only element of the coaching job were the task of attempting the penetration of brains congenitally incapable of absorbing new ideas with some semblance of sporting intelligence, it would be bad enough. But of course that’s only half the job.
The other half is presenting the Australian media and rugby-watching public with a billy-club and inviting them to have a bash at your crotch for several years.
The deal goes like this, when you’re Wallabies coach: when you lose, you will be savaged because you lost. When you win, you will be savaged because you didn’t win by enough, you didn’t win in the right style, or your next game is going to be harder and you’re definitely not going to win that one.
Every game of your time in charge will be followed by an outpouring of public angst and savagely depressed punditry that will make the twin observations that a) the players are woefully unfit for purpose, and b) the coach is criminally culpable for not turning a rabble of talentless hacks into a world champion team.
This will happen week after week, month after month, year after year: a stream of invective and increasingly shrill demands for you to find a way to defeat teams with much better players.
On the odd occasion, the better teams will have a night off, and your team will defeat them, which will cause the commentariat to declare a New Dawn, following which the better team will pull itself together, do what teams that are good at rugby usually do to teams that aren’t, and the commentariat will curse you to Hades for giving them false hope.
All of this will add up to you, within a few short weeks of accepting the job, achieving the impressive feat of causing the entire nation to further lose interest in the game, and also becoming the entire nation’s most hated person. All of which you’ll have to block out when you get down to training and try for the 80th time to teach the players the difference between running forwards and running sideways.
So yes, it is with complete confidence that I say the next coach will be a heady mixture of as-yet-undetermined proportions of stupid and crazy.
In fact, the best way to judge whether someone is qualified to coach the Wallabies is to check whether they want to: if they do, you know they’re not. But hey, that’s rugby for you.
My advice to fans would be to take some deep breaths, watch a few videos of the Wallabies in the ’90s, and try not to cry.
HR
Roar Rookie
The TV viewing figure includes "occasional" viewers - I would think that covers most people who are interested in the game. It would be a rare person who was interested in AFL but never watched a game on TV.
rugbyrah
Guest
The Springbok's coach Erasmus would be an excellent candidate.
Lindsay Amner
Roar Guru
Yep from the other half, but the obsession is in Victoria. If you get about a 40% viewership in the other states it still leaves about 80-90% in the obsessed state, Victoria.
Lindsay Amner
Roar Guru
And that’s TV viewing only. The NZ figure is “interested”. I suggest that those “interested” in AFL would be a far bigger figure.
HR
Roar Rookie
Fair enough - that sounds like a reasonable assumption. Assuming 20% viewership from half the population (QLD, NSW, ACT) requires 62% viewership from the other half to equal 41% viewership overall. Not quite the 80-90% you suggested in a previous comment, but it sounds like a fair estimate. :thumbup:
Lindsay Amner
Roar Guru
This is a break down of the number of senior registered players in the top New Zealand sports from SportNZ: Golf: 128,860 Netball: 120,440 Soccer: 105,023 Rugby Union: 98,543 Cricket 87,100 You can get variations on these figures in other places. NZRU says 156,000 rugby players but NZFootball says 200,000 soccer players.
Lindsay Amner
Roar Guru
Soccer is way ahead on playing numbers.
Lindsay Amner
Roar Guru
No it assumes about a 20% viewership in NSW and Qld
Lindsay Amner
Roar Guru
https://www.theroar.com.au/2017/10/24/new-zealand-really-obsessed-rugby/ Here’s an article I wrote about it a couple of years ago. There’s an article in the NZ Herald today saying the same thing. It’s on Premium so I can’t share it. The loss last week has been taken in NZ with a shrug and an “oh well”. A few years ago this response would have been unheard of. The vitriol poured out in 1999 and 2003 is a thing of the past even only 16 years later. It’s similar to the entrenched view in Australia that NZ is overrun with sheep. This hasn’t been the case for decades. In those same decades the obsession with rugby has gone the same way as the sheep. It’s died. When more than 50% of the population say they are not interested in rugby they cannot translate to a NATIONAL obsession. There are certainly pockets of obsession, such as my house, major schools and small country towns, but there is no myopic national obsession.
HR
Roar Rookie
That assumes zero viewership in QLD and NSW, which is pessimistic, particularly given that the Sydney Swans have large viewership numbers (they were the most-watched team in 2018 according to TV viewership statistics).
Craig
Guest
Excited to say that on this criteria I'm over-qualified for the job. I actually do think I could do a better job of it than Cheika which probably reinforces my idiocy-based qualification!
Republican
Guest
.......I concur, as a Victorian born, ACT supporter of the code Lindsay but this does not take away from the weight of NZ fanaticism and obsession for Union. Like you, in respect of Australian Footy, I have been exposed to Kiwi irrational fervour for the code both here, overseas and in NZ. From my perspective, NZ'ers are every much as myopic about Rugby Union (and possibly moreso, because they derive so much global identity from it) as many are here in regards to Australian Footy and especially in Vic, WA, SA and Tassie. If NZ were to lose this WC, the ugly face of Kiwi myopia will certainly be revealed for all to see, read and hear, to be sure.
Republican
Guest
......Australian footy is not exclusively a Victorian passion. The code is followed throughout the nation Lindsay and traditionally as strong in WA, SA, Tasmania, parts of southern NSW, the NT and the ACT. Cant give you percentages but yes, the code derives an obsessive following and not just in Vic.
Republican
Guest
......thats vertially half the population. That is obsessive to my mind, while I am yet to meet a Kiwi anywhere on the planet who doesn't support the AB's. Conversely most of my cohort have little to no interest in Union and most of those couldn't tell you who the Wallabies are.
Republican
Guest
.......ours is Tennis and Swimming from my recollection. The analogy should be with similar team codes. I reckon you'll find Union is number one in NZ in that respect. There is NO denying that the status of Union in NZ is poles apart from what it is here in Australia but then you can believe that we are on a level playing field if that somehow makes you feel better about yourselves.
Republican
Guest
......not saying you are not good at other sports at all. We are also very good at sports other than Australian Rules Footy albeit a domestic code and Rugby League. Both these codes dominate our sporting psyche in the same way Union does NZ's.
Republican
Guest
......are you sure about that? Its certainly the number one Winter code from what I've read.
Republican
Guest
......spot on. It's cultural and we are a very different culture to NZ despite what we like to believe. I would say we are evolving more different especially courtesy of our immigration. Union is and always was the quintessential code for Nz'ers which has never been the case here. Our sporting DNA is growing more dynamic and as such, being spread thinner while our culturally quintessential sport is probably Cricket together with Australian Rules Football.
Lindsay Amner
Roar Guru
Sorry but your sums are badly out. Half the population of Australia live in NSW and QLD. So if your data includes those states it’s massively diluted. Victoria would need an 80-90% viewer rate to even that out to 41% I lived in Victoria for several years and I can assure you that obsession with AFL is on a totally different level to what I experience with rugby in NZ. There is no comparison.
HR
Roar Rookie
I honestly don't think AFL would get more than about a 60% "interested" vote, even in Victoria. The only data I can find on TV viewing of AFL is from a Roy Morgan poll, in which 41% of respondents said they watch AFL (everything from occasional viewing to regular viewing was included). The data wasn't broken down by state, but most states and territories follow AFL (WA, SA, VIC, TAS, NT), so even with small viewer percentages in QLD, NSW and the ACT, Victoria won't have numbers as high as you're suggesting. For a direct comparison, an equivalent poll conducted by Roy Morgan in NZ found that 43.6% of New Zealanders watch Rugby, so it's a greater percentage than AFL viewers in Australia.