'Losing mentality': What's wrong with the Wallabies?

To trade test with the French, English, South Africans and Argentinians means the Wallabies are not stuffed, it is just very competitive. Add Ireland , Scotland and Wales all strengthening and it just a different landscape than it was 15 years ago. …

Glad you've raised this LM. I've also been commenting on this theme for a while. Think the injury count has been elevated for years..anyone have any solid stats on injuries relative to other unions? Self evidently, the Wallabies are more susceptible than top tier sides to injuries due to player depth. Ergo, we should have a best in class S&C programme to offset this. Although anecdotal, this is pretty alarming.

I may be wrong, but I think thos was around the time when under Gary Flower we set up an extravagant ARC and drew down heavily on the post 2003 war chest. What a bl..dy distraction...

Add: Free kicks not making touch, balls thrown into touch, lineouts not straight, scrum resets. Basic errors costing WBs very big at test level. Unforgiveable.

I think some of these are symptoms (eg skills, but I don't think there is a lack of focus on culture/pride/unity. - restoration of the Gold jersey - a lot of reference to 'making people proud' in pre/post game media appearances going back to at least Cheika -indigenous jersey incorporating Pasifika styling elements -WTC - playing the game in Adelaide, Perth. It's not like they not trying or striking the right notes but it's a very broad church of players and fans to appeal to and unify in an extremely competitive market where much of the 'product' decisions are taken by committee and/or off shore (ie laws, scheduling, organisation, media negotiations and officiating). Root cause of all of this is funding. We are outclassed and have failed for much of the professional era. Until we secure longer term funding then the rot will continue. For now, RA appear to be doing a decent job IMO preparing/packaging rugby for investment.

Lot of good insights there sheek. Your point 6 provides a very good historical context for one the the major reasons rugby in Australia is now in the position that it's in. When you've lost a war the best thing you can do is try to make the best peace deal that you can.

Nice post Two Cents. You do wonder however if there is a mentality of focussing on the RWC because that is the where the eyeballs are. Succeed and it may well strengthen the game by attracting new fans, fail and the game retreats further. Is this focus out of necessity? I wonder if doing the "basic things" can only come after success as the money can only stretch so far. I'm sure RA would love to invest in these areas but they cannot ignore the pinnacle of the sport. This is where I think further tweaks to the Giteau law or a temporary suspension of it might be wise. Like your excellent comments on international pathways suggest, we cannot benefit from the positives of outsourcing aspects of their development without being able to pick them.

That's a great post Bluesfan. Criticism of DR and other coaches belies the fact there has been a lot of instability recently and some of it baked into Oz rugby. A few additions/supplementary points I would make: -a lack of a centralised player contracting model and a sensible centralisation of the unions to ensure best use of limited assets - player depth is a major issue. We are outgunned by other unions in terms of having test quality replacements for injury. We are constantly one or two injuries away from being a markedly poorer side. Injuries severely limit our ability to grow into new strategies. - I would like to know how our strength and conditioning program really stacks up against others. It feels like our injury levels are far too high, including players who haven't necessarily played a lot of rugby. - player drain to overseas unions hurts super rugby but I believe we are better off overall letting some players go where they can access top tier coaching. This is where I would tweak the Giteau law further.

Aww, Sad Boi.

Two cents, I'll say it again: You say negative, I say honest. A lot of people can't handle honesty, & I guess you're one of them. That's my two cents worth... :happy:

Rather nice echo chamber you got going on this thread, sheek, it's rather becoming of you. You seem to enjoy making absolute negatives out of anything to do with the Wallabies, often when what you're basing your negativity on is a hypothetical scenario that you have created out of nothing and like a strawman you use it to discredit or undermine any valid positive thinking or constructive criticism. Sure, it's fine to be negative, that's your opinion. But could you please have an actual basis for your criticism, not just for criticism's sake? The "kingmaker" argument, as you put it, is as classic a strawman as you'll find anywhere. Any Australian politician would be all over themselves to have been able to come up with one as groundless as you have, so for that, my hat's off to you. There is no disincentive to supporters of a team when their team fails to make the cut in a competition that has multiple levels, a fact that you seem either oblivious to or to unreasonably discount. Look at most professional sports overseas and they usually have more than one level of competition available to them in their domestic leagues. The EPL is a great example where the sides who have been long relegated from the top flight continue to draw their fanbases week in week out even for 4th and 5th level matches. Having a relegation is good for competition because it provides extra incentive to improve your performances year on year especially if your side is weaker and usually in the bottom of the table. And it provides a merit-based vehicle by which teams can shift between levels of competition. There are also many proven ways to offset the apparently uneven playing field between teams that you claim as an obstacle to such a competition and common ones used in professional sports are salary caps and player drafts, both of which serve as a form of self-regulation between the teams themselves without the need for more egregious arbitrary interventions by a central authority. I don't see any of your apparent gripes as presenting an insurmountable obstacle to the eventual development of a fully professional domestic rugby championship in Australia, particularly since we have already had 2 rather promising comps in the last 15 years. So it has been done before and it can be done again.

I think there's a lot of merit in your assessment there, BF, particularly your point about the overbearing focus on RWC performance by RA. There are much more substantial structural issues as you point out that fans should probably be turning their attentions to and hassling RA about before turning on the coaches. After all, a coach can only work with what he has available to him within the framework at the time. One of those issues is the completely arbitrary restriction on selecting foreign-based players for the Wallabies. Since RA and the State Unions are either unable or unwilling (or both) to devote their energies and resources to developing a comprehensive domestic professional competition for rugby, they have essentially crafted a system that forces potential talent that isn't already in one of the established pathways to seek fortune off-shore, where they develop as players and become valuable prospects for international representation. But if you wont ever pick them due to your stupid selection rules, what was the point of outsourcing their development? There also appears to have been a disturbing trend since about or after Eddie Jones was fired as Wallabies coach in 2005 in trying to force Australian sides into a style of play that runs completely against the natural inclinations and abilities of the players. One of the criticisms of Jones' sides was that they weren't exciting and didn't generate a lot of flashy moments that the media and fans of rival codes, particularly league, could gobble up. Or worse, they were accused of playing into the hands of the opposition by playing "their" game. But his sides achieved results nonetheless and I don't see losing in a RWC final as a failure of the program. Now that successions of coaches have essentially been required to push "attack at all costs" rugby in order to shore up RA's bottom line, the performances have tanked and consistency is no longer a word that has meaning to any Australian team other than the Brumbies. Let's us both hope that RA doesn't mess with that formula or you guys wont have have any provincial competition outside NZ at all. Until this amateur management to what should be a pinnacle professional sport significantly advances and starts to make the smart decisions that rugby needs, things are going to remain stagnant. They wont get substantially worse (I mean, how could they unless we just stop turning up to games at all) but there wont be any improvement either. Certainly not something that would ever be tolerated over your way and I feel insulted that we have to endure it over here again and again. There isn't really a substantial lack of depth in skill or talent here but there is a lack of experience at the high intensity levels that international rugby demands. Obviously, Deans in particular and now Rennie have worked hard to "blood" as many players as they can (partly forced through injury and suspensions as well) to generate positive competition for selection within the team and give as many guys minutes as possible in order to ameliorate this deficiency. My criticisms of both McKenzie and Cheika is that they seemed to be far more abrasive and autocratic in their management of their teams and their team selections to me at least seemed to be based on some personal bias rather than informed by player form and had a flavour of adversity about them, as in players having to "play off" against each other on the training pitch and around the club for favour rather than being given genuine opportunities to prove themselves on the field. It can achieve limited results but it tends not to breed long term success as their teams are testament to. Chasing RWC glory is all well and good but that isn't the bread and butter of rugby and that is possibly why RA is increasingly finding itself in deeper and deeper financial stress. They want to put all their attentions on the world stage and ignore success in any other arena because the Wallabies are their marquee brand. But if they aren't delivering a product that us, their audience, that we want to consume regularly, how do they ever imagine that they will attract the long-term investment they need to improve their supporting structures and services for the game here? It isn't even a matter of competing with other codes. It's doing the basic things right for your own code so that what you produce out on the field resonates with your target audience and they (us) respond by watching and going to games and buying memberships and merchandise, etc, etc. That's what builds the bottom line and gives you the ability to invest in and develop your brands and most importantly your game. But the performance has to come first.

You just relocate sth Sydney to another part of Australia and call them something else, like sth Melbourne or Fitzroy.

Probably all fair points, Nobes, if perhaps a little too despairing. Completely agree regarding a losing game plan or plans since this is a pattern we have seen recurring for a long time now across different team compositions and under different coaches. But I don't think you can definitively say that there's a losing mentality or culture. I think rather it's the absence of a winning mentality or culture that is what is undermining the Wallabies and I think this in part stems from a lack of belief in the game plan and a lack of trust in each other. I feel that the lack of belief in the game plan is the main issue and it has arisen because the Australian players are being forced into a style that is contrary to their own natural tendencies and inherent rugby "intelligence" or nous. We have never been about big offense, about running huge guys who dominate the field with their presence and speed and run over the opposition. Nor about possessing the ball for long tranches of the game. Australian rugby has always been about sustained graft that builds pressure and is rewarded by opposition mistakes and making use of very limited opportunities. Not pretty rugby perhaps, but effective and proven, and most importantly, it is OUR brand. This is what we need our game plans to become again if we want the consistency of outcomes to return for our team. On to the second issue, being a lack of trust between the players, this is in some ways more straight forward to remediate but also more insidious and intractable in others. Trust is built by a continuum of performance over seasons of playing together, not something you can cobble together at the last minute. Thanks to injuries, "fickle" selection and desperation for results, rarely have we seen the same players being played in the same positions week in week out and this obviously needs to be addressed first. Trust is also something that arises out of the inherent bonds between players that result from their personalities either gelling or clashing. Sometimes the clash is productive, other times a more amenable relationship is needed. A coach has to be as much a people manager as they are a game manager and I think we have had a tendency to choose coaches with good track records on paper over coaches who have good reviews from their past postings. In the coaches box, you need both kinds of manager, a sort of 'good cop, bad cop' approach to moulding and shaping the 'personality' of the team such that an individual can't affect overall performance.

You assert, allow a conversation / bidding period with flexibility for change, and then act. Like any government action. Then life moves on and people with it. Setting up the comp is not difficult. Maximizing revenue from broadcasters is the difficult bit. I like the idea f a Newcastle side but maybe that’s stage two in expansion. I hear what you say about the Drua. I just don’t want the kiwis to have them. Ok let’s replace them with a third Sydney club side. That should satisfy the arrogance of Sydneysiders. If the NRC taught us anything it was that Sydneysiders will not stomach artificiality in allegiance. So the only way forward ever is for established Sydney power to feel like they are in command. So let’s have Randwick, Eastwood, and Manly in the national comp. Get it up and running and adjustments can be made over time. The end of next year when the SR agreement runs out is the time to act. However revenue is the problem that is killing the game in this country. We are hostage to a SR comp that doesn’t work for domestic growth because we need the broadcast dollars. It’s a slow death.

I think lack of game awareness and management go hand in hand with ‘losing mentality’, I think the two feed into each other. Like a self fulfilling prophecy. But that’s just my take on it. ‘Losing mentality’ is a pretty intangible thing to define.

Absolutely spot on.

Catching the ball after a restart would be a good place to start. Would love to see the stats on spilled balls

I am not convinced by the "losing" mentality argument as it implies a change of brain process is all that is required to turn things around. Much focus is given to getting the Wallabies right and assuming this will fix the game here. I suspect it is the other way around - fix the foundations, and the Wallabies will be fixed. If junior, club, and district are all firing, then the players who develop through that world will have a winning mentality engrained in their brain. It becomes the default and is boosted by the sheer self-confidence that comes from playing well. The other key question is why Aus players and coaches who fail to fire in Aus yet perform really well when they head overseas.