To fix the Wallabies, we need to fix the real problems

When the only pathway to the Green and Gold is through elite private schools, and Rugby Australia can't see it (old boy blindness) Australian Rugby suffers. RA need to immediately engage with the NSW, QLD departments of education and get Rugby back into public schools. Only then will the base be strong enough to support future green and gold success.

If only the children at my wife’s school had a rugby family, community, out there near Ipswich, their lives would be different. It’s not always about the money. But the connections and friendships, the blood and sweat and tears, of winning and losing. But mostly the inner journey of your soul, your character. Could be a few nights on the turps though!

Hey Sheek Always enjoy your comments. I know you are passionate about the game, and have written some great stories. You have got the s**ts sometimes and cried off. Don’t ever cry off again. I’ve come back to this comment after a few day because I thought it was important, you have to keep putting your thoughts forward, no matter what people think or say. It is the same on the rugby field, if someone commits some atrocity upon you, wait your time and get them back - with the best tackle you can deliver. I started playing rugby at high school in 1966, I never chose rugby- rugby seamed to have chosen me. I gave it away for 5 years, 1971-1975 and then came back and played for 10 years. I chose to come back as a hooker after having played for WASPS ( not the firsts)in the Uk. But ahead of me were Billy Ross, David Nucifora and Laurie Fisher- I am older than them all. I would have kept playing except for another broken bone- my thumb. No good in my career. My life has been defined by the game. My wife teaches at a school in an underprivileged area near Ipswich, the kids come from fractured family backgrounds, terrible stories, where parents are in jail,etc. I was a Legacy child and decided to give rugby a go when I got to high school. I will be seventy soon. My father fought in WWII, died when I was 10, his father fought in WWI - none of them ever played sport. But those men and those generations were great people. I respect your work, remember you just have to get up and get to the next ruck. I have had a hand extended to me from Chris Handy when lying on the ground “ come on get up”. At the next scrum , I get a headbutt. So it goes . Good friends.

I'm not a fan of central planning. Especially in an Australian context where it will just become NSW running everything. Just cos NZ and Ireland do it doesn't make it right. The benefits of having multiple local systems is that you have competing theories of how the game should be administered or played and an element of competition to see which one works the best. Centralised systems have no real world checks or balances and everything becomes political rather than merit based. Australia's problem is we don't have enough talent at all levels of the system. Players, coaches, administrators. Doesn't matter what system you deploy if its not stocked with talent.

Also like Yukio Mishima - The Sailor Who Fell Grace with The Sea. Yukio tried to bring Japan back to Bushido . He was a writer and poet who tried to inspire Japan by committing seppuku in a military base while holding its commandant hostage. 1970.

It’s about when your on the sake in a little bar in a little alley in Tokyo at night. You float. In the morning the harsh light comes in. You can be any sort of artist.

Rhetorical question. If you don't break the law then you don't get locked up. Horrific as it is where society fails is the duty of parents has is now seemingly non existent. It is really easy to make it all a race issue, the it is everyone's else's fault but ours bs. Why aren't children playing sport, attending school ... ask the parents, ask the communities? Where are the role models or is that question a little too hard? Sadly the responsibility for our collective children is to blame rather than accept.

May be we need to look at the model that phill gould has adopted at penrith rugby league club. When penrith were on there knees as a club, phill gould stepped in and the rest is history. it had everything to do with the juniors and mentoring young people. RA need good kick in the %$&#. They have no clear direction that we can see.

It could be worse. For example, All Blacks supporters have perhaps taken even more of a belting.

Hey people How come we dont have an indigenous all stars team in rugby. Is this telling a story about how being inclusive in rugby is dead. We watched a horifying doco about our indigenous being locked up at ten. Why are they not playing sport. Why are they not being kept busy on being our next mark ella. Why are our young not playing sport generally. Where did the wheels fall off. When will we see another campese, far jones,walker,williams,larkham,gregan etc do you get the picture.

agree completely adam. as a kiwi, I cant believe these sorts of discussions always end up in petty state v state nonsense. you will NEVER defeat the world while you waste so much time, energy and money throwing shade on your neighbours.

For mine it would be finding a way around the politics. You mention it but that's the whole ballgame right there. If RA could get everyone pushing in a similarish direction, plus an influx of funds due to upcoming tournaments, that would really go a long way. A third tier is also a non-negotiable requirement, but it can't work in the current system. The politics gatekeeps the whole lot.

Thanks Robster, I look forward learning more about the Book of Five Rings. So many things to discuss, but where to start. As a beginning, I'm not a fan of centralisation. Yes, head office should have a clear vision & structural pathway that everyone else knows & supports, but other organisations (provincial) should also have flexibility of philosophy within the big picture. Let's go back to 1978-80. As a young man in my early 20s I learnt a valuable lesson that there is more than one way to play winning rugby. In 1978 the Wallabies began with an aggressive, conservative forward based game to beat Wales. Then in the last test of the season, thrashed the All Blacks with a pulsating running game. Then in 1979, the Wallabies won a try-less test against the ABs at the SCG, again with an aggressive, conservative forward based game. This was again replicated in 1980 when Queensland beat the ABs for the only time in their history. Meanwhile again in 1980, a young, adventurous Wallaby team beat the ABs 2-1 with an exhilarating brand of rugby. Two distinctly different styles side by side, both successful. What I learnt from that was that you needed to develop players with the flexibility to excel at different styles, changing from on to another when the circumstances demanded it. But underscoring this should be an absolute adherence to basics. getting the basics right is paramount. Would a centralised coaching system allow for that? Yes, if it was in their memorandum of understanding of the game. But let's go back to 1968, when I first became aware of rugby union. I think often I was lucky to come into the game when the Wallabies were so hopeless. It developed a resilience as a fan which allowed me to be truly appreciative when the Wallabies became more successful later on. But not to the point of being arrogant, because what goes up inevitably comes back down again. It's been obvious, especially on this forum, that fans who came into the game when the Wallabies were successful, have struggled to cope with accepting defeat after defeat when the Wallabies are ordinary. Between 1968-73, the Wallabies played 26 tests for just five wins & one draw, & a win percentage of less than 20%. Two of the wins wee against second tier nations Fiji & Tonga. When the Wallabies lost their 2nd test to Tonga, the realisation dawned that our playing stocks had hit rock bottom. An exhaustive report was compiled by the ARU, out of which a national coaching system was developed, under the guidance of its new director, ex-Wallaby Dick Marks. Queensland helped by lifting its own standards, sending Bob Templeton to Wales to pick the brains of their then genius coaches Carwyn James & Clive Rowlands. Another genius innovation by Queensland was to begin regular tours of NZ to help lift playing standards, culminating in a sentinel 42-4 walloping of NSW in 1976. Seeing how quickly Queensland had risen in their standards, NSW also began regular tours of NZ, helping both states to improve dramatically. All this worked fantastically well to the end of the century. The success of the 1984, 1991 & 1999 Wallabies can almost certainly be traced back to the unified coaching system & clear pathways developed from the mid-70s. When John O'Neill became CEO of the ARU in 1996, he had his own ideas. For a while he was seen as a genius. But he got lucky, his arrival coinciding with a 'golden generation' of players. He punted Marks, because he didn't think he was relevant anymore. He also rejected an idea from Topo Rodriguez for a prop's school. By the end of 2005, the Wallaby scrum had degenerated into an internationals laughing stock. Not finished yet, he didn't want Mark Ella anywhere near the place, for giving advice to up & coming flyhalfs on the skills required for the position. What we would give today to have #10s with the skill, vision & flair of Ella, Lynagh & Larkham. That was then, this is now. Back in the mid-70s, Australian rugby had the room to improve & grow. Today, it is almost as if they are in a box canyon with mountains on three sides & the only entry/exit blocked by a massive landslide. Australia has handled the move to professionalism poorly. Instead of sitting pretty with a huge war chest of funds, & a steady supply chain of quality players sustaining a successful Wallabies, it seems as if everything has fallen apart. Some things have been out of the control of the ARU/RA, but most are the result of their own fault their own poor planning & vision. Today RA is broke, if not technically, then certainly compared to their key competitor NRL/ARL. The NRL can pay players from their mid-teens to compete in junior comps, something the RA cannot do. They can also offer 15 NRL clubs, soon to be 16, from which a player entering senior ranks, can choose. RA can only offer five provincial super rugby sides. A NRL player who doesn't make state of origin or the Kangaroos, can make a very comfortable living from club football. In rugby, unless you make the Wallabies or go overseas, you don't really hit the big time in remuneration. This may seem an unfair observation, but it appears rugby is only attracting second-rate players. Anyone with real talent is playing rugby league, or at least being prepared to challenge themselves against the highest quality opposition. I can't see a way back for Australian rugby & the Wallabies this time, because I don't know where they are going to find the quality players. A further problem, is that the state high schools, who enjoyed their high-water mark decades from the 70s through 90s, are now regressing with teachers unwilling to give up their after school time for coaching, & students being distracted by other alternatives. The GPS & CAS systems are still stuck in a kind of 50s timewarp, where the challenge is to only be better than the other schools, without seeking of ways to develop standards beyond the norm. This is an article that requires a deeper response, but this is a s much as I can provide at present, without my brain going mush. Suffice to say, Australian rugby is headed, I think, the same way as Australian tennis, West Indies cricket, Indian hockey & perhaps Hungarian soccer. The satirical sports website Convict Creations, eventually shut down about a decade ago, because super-sensitive, powerful AFL clubs resented having the piss taken out of them, made the prescient observation that Australia could not sustain 4 professional football codes, & suggested that rugby union was most likely to be the fall guy. And they made that observation about 12 years ago. Nothing happening today suggests that their observation is incorrect.

I doubt that centralization would lead to every franchise playing the same style. It should lead to as you say everyone developing the same skill sets so replacements can be made and new players have the skills to play their role. What centralization should do is even up the talent (like drafts do in other codes all around the world) so that for example the Waratahs don’t have 3 five eights and The reds none, or the Brumbies 4 wallaby hookers and the reds none. It should also teach a basic set of skills for each position and across the board - how to clean rucks for example, how to box kick, how to pass left to right etc. I think individuals will always make a difference, both coaches and players. The reds will still kick out of their own half, the Tahs will still run it form everywhere and the Brumbies will still kick to the corners and maul. Centralization shouldn’t be feared.

I have something in this regard after Australia exits Super Rugby: what I’ll call the Australian XV Premiership. My AXV Premiership has ten teams, three in Queensland (Reds in Brisbane, new second Brisbane and North Queensland teams), three in New South Wales (Waratahs in Sydney, new teams in Western Sydney and Country NSW), and one each in Canberra (Brumbies), Melbourne (Rebels), Perth (Force) and Adelaide (new team). Each team – men and women – plays 19 rounds (so double round-robin and one bye) with a final five. I would also suggest that RA cancel their 2024 season to rebuild and refocus - despite how a cancelled season sounds, it worked wonders for ice hockey in 2004-05 (you can look this up if you need to).

Well written. While it is true that Rugby players must like your tradesmen be masters of the basics of their positions , they must also be able to adapt to what is in front of them and the unexpected . We a team for anything . There must be a great overall administration. The appointed leaders for the task must be proven. There must be a clear strategy for the future . A clear short term aim for the present. . Superb fitness and training of the drills and skills . There is too much of the Angelo Dundee theory with Rennie. Angelo toughened ALI’s head by having sparring partners hit ALI in the head . That’s our Dave . If a match was a army patrol those in the patrol would know that they were picked as early as possible . They would access all available information about the task , the enemy , friendly forces and the terrain . They would select their equipment , test their weapon and rehearse every move together . They would rest up , avoid injuries and be at their absolute fittest . They would know the strengths and small weaknesses of those around them . They would however have confidence in them . They would know who was over zealous , not quite switched on or hesitant . They would be ready to compensate . Time with our SAS would be good . Not the physical side , the thinking side of fighting.

It doesn't have to be that rigid. Don't forget, Australia had a centralised coaching system from the mid 70s to the mid 90s that played a huge role in your golden age 1979 to 2003.