With yet another Super Rugby title safely locked away in Christchurch, frustrated Australian fans look on and wonder despondently, ‘what is the point of it all?’

The number of Australian franchise winners in crossover games against New Zealand opposition remains stubbornly low (this season, six wins), and while losing margins have shrunk, the competition remains undeniably lop-sided. Despite a valiant effort by the Reds in Hamilton, in 16 finals matches across the Tasman, Australian sides are yet to taste success. At Test level, Australia hasn’t had its hands on the Bledisloe Cup since 2002.

Theories as to why, and possible solutions abound. But the single factor that appeals as the one most likely to shift the dial in any meaningful and sustainable way, is coaching.

It’s an emotive topic; rugby fans tend to focus on individuals, often in a binary way. Scott Robertson, winner of seven straight titles, is lauded as a ‘gun’. Aaron Mauger, by courtesy of being in charge of wooden spooners, Moana Pasifika, is tagged a ‘dud’.

Professional clubs across a range of sports tend to follow a similar path. The cycle starts when a new coach is appointed in an accompanying, social media driven, blaze of optimism. Then, once the honeymoon period is over, if results aren’t as hoped, pressure – real and implied – is applied to the organisation and the coach, by media, sponsors and the fan base.

Richie Mo’unga and coach Scott Robertson  (Photo by Hannah Peters/Getty Images)

Inevitably, a losing head coach will be said to ‘have lost the dressing room’, be ‘difficult to deal with’, or ‘is a great guy who unfortunately doesn’t have what it takes’. Soon enough, the obligatory ‘full support of the board’ rears its head, shortly before the hapless coach skulks off into the sunset, and the net is cast once again.

To be clear; just like players, some coaches are more talented and capable than others. But the individual competency spread is far narrower than what most people think. Winning coaching is a culmination of multiple factors.

Feted German football coach Matthias Sammer, commenting in the book, ‘Mensch: Behind the Cones’, by Jonathan Harding, explains how, “the head coach, in the key role, is a component of the system, but they aren’t the system. We have to strengthen systems that simultaneously protect coaches in order to understand how coaches work.”

This means that within a franchise structure, the head coach is just one piece – albeit a critically important one – in a complex puzzle comprising the board, executive management, director of rugby (recruiter), assistant coaches, medical and strength and conditioning staff, player roster, ancillary and other support staff. All underpinned by the infrastructure and financial resources available.

If only one of those blocks is out of place, outcomes are compromised. There wouldn’t be an Australian franchise, since Super Rugby began, that hasn’t had multiple shortcomings in every single season. And while these impediments might be easy enough to identify, they are devilishly hard to overcome.

What is clear however, is that Australian rugby’s coaching ills run far deeper than the goings on at its individual franchises, and the particular merits of each head coach.

Ex-National Head of Athletic Performance for Rugby Australia, Dean Benton, identifies a chronic lack of strategic direction, and the failure to design and implement a cohesive coach development plan, as the biggest impediment facing Australian rugby.

“No sport can progress and grow without good quality coaching,” he tells ‘The Roar’. “These coaches don’t just appear out of nowhere, they must be identified and developed.”

Benton points to examples from overseas, where a focus on coaching has paid dividends. “The success of Finnish Ice Hockey in the last 25 years provides Australian rugby with a clue. Currently ranked #1 and #3 respectively in men’s and women’s Ice Hockey, how does a country of just 5.5 million people compete so well against major Ice Hockey nations with bigger populations, more financial resources and greater rink density per capita?” he asks.

Answering his own question, Benton explains how, prior to hosting the 1997 World Championships, Finland invested heavily, adding more coaching staff into their seven regions, and creating Director of Coaching positions at all major clubs.

These appointments were purposed to coach coaches, not players. All appointments were individuals who met strict criteria; coaching experience at elite level, and demonstrated understanding of teaching, coaching andragogy, and modern learning science.

Dave Hadfield was at the heart of New Zealand rugby’s coach development for 24 years, straddling the transition into professionalism. Now a consultant to World Rugby and the MLB Toronto Blue Jays, Hadfield offers up three points of difference that set New Zealand apart from Australia.

“Firstly, we’ve been doing this for a long time”, he says. “Ever since Bill Freeman was criss-crossing the country in the 1970s, we’ve had a focus on coach development. Then, in 1994 we started running a course developed in conjunction with Massey University, the ‘NZ Rugby Practicum’, out of which came coaches like Wayne Smith, Steve Hansen, Chris Boyd and numerous others, who all rate it as foundational in their development as coaches.”

“Post-2007, that evolved into annual 2 x 3-day workshops, with two separate streams; one specifically for Super Rugby coaches, and another for NPC coaches. That feeds into the second factor, which is that we recognised the importance of collaboration.”

Wallabies head coach Eddie Jones. (Photo by Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)

“Blending essential characteristics like leadership, creativity, humility and vulnerability, we developed a sense of everyone being part of something bigger than themselves and their own franchises, provinces or clubs. As a result, creating such a positive environment and culture, with all coaches harbouring a voracious appetite to share and learn from each other, and for that IP to flow down into all reaches of coaching, New Zealand rugby has benefitted,” he explains.

Communication channels between Wallabies and Super Rugby coaches have improved in recent years, but the extent that Australian rugby is overlaid by historic parochialism, silo building and protectionism remains, by comparison, problematic.

Ex-Wallabies skipper Stephen Moore concurs. “We have difficulty getting alignment because of our federated structure. Rugby Australia, over the years, hasn’t really done things well enough for the states to be motivated to follow them,” he says.

“There’s an inherent scepticism about the programs and that doesn’t lend itself to promoting a centralised environment and collaboration around that.”

Moore adds; “Anyone in a central ‘Director of Coaching’ or similar role – and we’ve seen good, smart rugby people like Rod Kafer and Scott Johnson in recent years – is going to find it hard to get buy in because, whatever they do, there’s not that trust that Rugby Australia is at an elite level, and so there’s no alignment there to begin with.”

The third factor Hadfield identifies is, “our emphasis on how to coach rather than what to coach. 90% of the decisions a player makes in a game come from the sub-conscious mind – there’s no time for conscious decision-making, rather players (with an in-depth knowledge of the gameplan, their positional role and the opposition) react to what’s in front of them and what they hear from their team-mates. Accordingly, we try to train coaches to understand how to shine a light into each player’s sub-conscious, so that their intuitive reactions become the right ones.”

The inability of Australian players to continue to develop is something that frustrates Moore. “In Australian Super Rugby programs, we see too many talented players enter the system, and fail to develop year on year. Our Super Rugby programs need to be producing more world class players. The program makes the player, not the other way around. Whilst some of the that is on the players, it’s also reflective of the inability of our coaches, and our coaching system, to develop their skills and improve them,” he says.

It isn’t hard to tick off Mack Hansen, Luke Morahan and Will Skelton as just some of the players who have left Australia and become better, to illustrate Moore’s point.

(Photo by Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images)

Benton also points to a flaw in Australia’s junior pathway system, which affects players and coaches; “Instead of properly developing our emerging players, our academy system warehouses them. This is due to the lack of a centralised approach.

As a result, emerging players spend large portions of the year in school programs and playing club rugby which, as well as being of varying quality depending on location, dilutes coaching effectiveness.”

“If we want emerging talent to enter professional rugby environments far more ready and rounded, this should be via the establishment of designated sports schools and centralised academies, where consistent, high-level coaching can be guaranteed,” he concludes.

In a rugby environment where newer coaches find it very difficult to build sufficient high-level experience, that’s obviously an avenue which can help them get more miles under their belts. To this point, reading Harding’s account of German football’s coaching renaissance, one is struck by the sheer amount of experience able to be gained by developing coaches, before they are thrust into high-pressure, high level head coach positions.

For example; “David Wagner achieved historic success at Huddersfield Town after 150 games in charge of Borussia Dortmund’s reserves, and 50 games in charge of two youth teams at Hoffenheim.”

Among other examples, Harding also cites the heralded appointment of Daniel Stendel as Barnsley coach, having coached 34 first-team games at Hannover, and a lazy 207 U17 and U19 games at the same club.

Ex-Wallaby prop Nick Stiles took on the Reds head coach role in 2017 with a grounding that included Super Rugby assistant roles under Richard Graham and Michael Foley, the NRC, and earlier, four seasons in Japan, with the Kubota Spears. “I probably had as good an apprenticeship as you could get at the time, but even so, taking on the head coach role was very different. It was an incredibly steep learning curve on the job,” he explains.

Stiles also identifies another important factor. “Obviously, with only five professional franchises we don’t have many high-performance head coaches. And yet, we lose too many of them. Graham, Foley, Tony McGahan, Dave Wessels, Andy Friend, Michael Cheika and more; that’s a whole lot of rugby IP gone, replaced by guys on the way up, who have to learn a lot of the same things from scratch.”

Michael Hooper (L) and then Waratahs coach Michael Cheika (Photo by Matt King/Getty Images)

It remains to be seen whether Dan McKellar, now ensconced in Leicester, will return to the Australian system better for the experience, or will become another name to add to that list.

No better example of Australian coaching expertise being put to better use overseas resides with David Nucifora; since 2014, High Performance Director with the Ireland Rugby Football Union. Nucifora was lost to Australian rugby after his push to adopt a centralised player and coaching contracting and development model was rejected by the states.

With four professional franchises to Australia’s five, Ireland is similar in make-up to Australia. With Ireland ranked #1 and Australia #7 in the current Test nation standings, the similarities end there.

Another departed Super Rugby coach is Rob Penney, whose term at the Waratahs was abruptly severed five games into his second season. Tagged as a failed coach by Waratahs fans, Penney has recently been appointed to replace Robertson as head coach of the Crusaders.

How can someone deemed to be an abject failure on one side of the Tasman be entrusted with the reins of Super Rugby’s undisputed champion across the ditch? It’s not until we understand the value of system over the individual that it begins to make sense.

The same concerns apply to women’s rugby. As evidenced by last year’s World Cup, and last week’s Black Ferns’ 50-0 shutout in Brisbane, the Wallaroos have fallen well behind New Zealand, England and France.

Super W matches are marked by players and coaches who are clearly putting enormous effort in but, because they are starting from a long way back, and because they play so few matches together, display profound technical, tactical and teamwork deficiencies.

(Photo by Richard Heathcote/2022 Getty Images)

That Australian rugby seems to be heading down the same path in the women’s game as the men did is doubly frustrating given the 2016 Olympics women’s sevens success.

Beyond an increase in numbers for what are often short-term, superficial junior and school’s programs, Rugby Australia’s failure to effectively leverage off that success, in promotion, recruitment, and high-performance – including coach development – is damning.

How much of that is due to paucity of vision, commitment to implementation, or money, and whether outcomes can be turned around, remains to be seen.

Whatever the sins of the past, it is the prerogative of each new administration to draw a line in the sand and promise change for the good. Entering the role last year, Matthew Wilkie is Rugby Australia’s National High Performance Coach Development Manager, responsible for the oversight and development of around 50 coaches in charge of all of Australia’s national teams, Super Rugby and Super Rugby academy teams; men’s and women’s.

“The difference between my role and other appointments in the past, is that those roles had a much broader remit,” Wilkie tells me. “My focus is on working with all coaches on individual 12-month development plans, and on the continual improvements that can be made in terms of what we do with our players.”

When pressed on resources and the potential to tap into the looming private equity investment into Australian Rugby, Wilkie is cautiously optimistic. “One of my tasks is to get a feel for what areas we need more resources in and to demonstrate that we can deliver outcomes and get maximum return on investment for whatever new funding might come our way,” he says.

Incoming Rugby Australia CEO Phil Waugh has so far given every indication that player and coach development will be a priority, but whatever path Wilkie and Waugh embark on, given Australian rugby’s historical structural impediments, and the penchant of chairman Hamish McLennan to operate as the defining driving force for the game, is this something that people in the game trust Rugby Australia to tackle and fix?

Betting the house on the hard-working, charismatic Eddie Jones to deliver a World Cup this year, or Joseph Suaalii to capture hearts and minds from next year, represents a sugar hit.

A full-blooded commitment to a centralised cohesive coaching strategy, owned and supported by all of Australian rugby’s stakeholders nationwide, covering high performance, junior and community rugby, built to be sustainable and self-generating over the long term, is the meat and potatoes.

Or, as they say in the land of rugby’s 2023 World Cup, the Steak Frites.