Meafou's time: Giant Aussie's rise from overlooked NRC prodigy to France's next big thing, new captains for England and Ireland

That's an annual payment, not one off.

Without big one off factors like the payment from NZR?

Yes, clumsy words from me. The point I was making was that just because Ireland is physically smaller doesn't mean you can't learn from them. I then went on to make the point that South Africa also has huge, impractical by land, distances between teams and they only have four. Even with Australia most of the population are a manageable distance from a pro team anyway.

As I said, you're mixing up two things. With the clown gone and the sensible words we're hearing it's hard to imagine RA being stupid enough to make further discretionary spending that would take the debt above what they'd expect to make from the RWC. It too obvious. And once the debt is paid it's irrelevant, a non issue. That takes us to the year to year. If they can make a surplus in 2022 without big one off factors they can do it again.

You keep saying the finances aren’t that bad. 8m surplus! Woohoo. Basically the money they got NZR to give them. However debt still rose by around 15m in 2022. I expect at least another 15m last year and they’ve just opened a credit facility for another 60m of debt. Interest rates on the prior 40m are punitive. I can’t got back and look at the annual report at the minute but I think around 7% over benchmark rates. I fully expect the new debt to be at even worse terms. Things are that bad.

Deriding Ireland? I was only suggesting land area brings different challenges. I think you are the one deriding them. ” If tiny, no tradition Ireland”

Yes but you’ve cherry picked the worst of every system! And the two worst organisations have made big mistakes – Scotland in being short termist and Wales in overspending on big players (ok COVID didn’t help). Australia have made similar mistakes, hence we are where we are, but at least they aren’t being short termist now and the budget blowing coach has left. Ireland you deride as tiny – sorry but if you can’t learn from how they have revolutionised themselves from useless to excellence that’s wilful blindness. One country you can’t call tiny is South Africa – 14 hours drive from Cape Town to the nearest rival. However you try to brush it off, South Africa isn’t that different – biggish nation, four teams, some players overseas (Australia has the advantage of fewer overseas, also a huge percentage of your population is within an hour’s drive of a SR team.) Like everyone else that isn’t hugely wealthy they have five or fewer teams – but Australia is so special that it needs more? RA has said that it won’t copy any one other country but it can still learn from them. And surely the lessons of what has and hasn’t worked in Australia and other countries are obvious, even if circumstances are different here and now? Australia were brilliant with two or three clubs and a focus on systems and poor with five clubs and no grassroots spending. South Africa went up to six and back down to four. Wales and Ireland went down to four and started winning the six nations all the time. NZ have stuck with five. Scotland are the exception – but they rebuffed Steve Anderson out of short termism. England and France have underachieved. The evidence is overwhelming. You keep on bringing up finances but they aren’t as bad as you make out. There are two components – debt and ongoing. I know that there will be a big loss in 2023, but the RWC and Lions will wipe out the debts. And the $8m 2022 surplus shows that there is room in the ongoing finances for grassroots spending – and much of the debt will be grassroots investment. You don’t need to turn your franchises into development teams.

JD, you complained I hadn’t addressed your points and when I do your response ignores Wales finances, Scotland’s lack of success and South Africa not restricting their players to your five club model. You ignore national differences suggesting what works in tiny Ireland can work in vast Oz. We haven’t even touched on the fact that when Oz was successful very few of our players were offshore but the massive salaries now available have changed that immensely. Let’s see how bad the finances are when the annual report comes out. We were 25m in debt at end of 22. They’ve had a huge set of additional cost, lower revenue and a WC budget blowout that they’ve admitted to. My guess is they have used the entire 40m from Ares Capital. We’ll get to see if that is right and if the PEP money is in addition or not.

Now now Jez, you've deliberately said a bunch of things that won't happen. And the finances aren't that bad. The RWC and Lions will pay off the debt and RA made a $8m surplus last year. Alignment and a bit of much needed Head Office bloat trimming should create some efficiencies so there will be money for the grassroots without the need to cut to two or three teams.

So drop back to just two or three teams to sort the finances and improved the Wallabies? We can’t afford to spend more on lower grades when we are already so far in debt. I don’t like it. I’d much rather grow the game around the country. That’s where we need to invest and in the long term how Oz will become strong again. Copying Scotland’s on field success, Wales financial success or concentrating talent in a single team aren’t models that attract me.

So this model can be successful then. Most obviously when they won the World Cup, but be fair - Connolly's 64% winning record and second in the world under Deans are achievements you'd love now. You've also outlined why it was successful and what you've lost since JON got rid of your national grassroots and high performance systems, which created those great players and coaches, as well as the ones who won the 1991 World Cup and won a grand slam and away Bledisloe series in the mid 80s. RA went from spending 14% of it's income on community rugby in 2002 to 2.4% in 2015. That's why they've gone downhill - don't blame the professional model which hasn't changed, apart from founding extra professional clubs. The professional model isn't the problem (except maybe that there are too many clubs) it's lost the foundations it was built on. You ask why not France or England? They've lost hundreds of millions of dollars of deficits to get those models where they are, which Australia can't afford. And they've underachieved - despite having the most money and most players they've won just one world cup between them. And England's lost three clubs in the past three years, unable to compete for players with a richer rival league - RA have to cope with two of those. So RA has to follow everyone else who have five or fewer clubs. You're right that you can't just keep doing what you're doing, so who is making the best job of it? Ireland used to be the worst of the Home Nations when they had lots of clubs. Then they went to four clubs, built up their grassroots and high performance systems, and gradually became, twice, the number one team in the world and financially secure. If tiny, no tradition Ireland can do it so can Australia. Sensibly, that is the path RA are following, improving alignment like Ireland have and hiring Ireland's Head of High Performance and breakthrough making Head Coach. Those blokes know what they're doing. I think I trust their judgement.

No French Territories, all is integral part of La France - no distinctions

Not just money - top 14 has the best talent and challenge for incomers to show what they've got

The Bishop has just done an excellent article on it in the other cathedral.

Seen LaRochelle beat Pau - Latu pass made winning try. Latu probably got reality check from UIni Atonio and lil Will : paraphrased "we have a winning culture,if Bougarit unavailable we on the tight side need a non flaky hooker - don't stuff up, and make sure U are available for selection - no off field shit, o/wise we beat the shit out of U. Any questions??

His adopted nation? France and Six Nations making a laughing stock of representative sport once again.

To the best of my knowledge the only players your imputaion could relate to is Meafou and Uini Antonio. All others in the France squad have either grown up in France or come from a French territory as is the case with Peato Mauvaka and Yoram Moefana(New Caledonia). Maybe we should be ‘fishing, in New Caledonia waters.

France has a lot of money and are unashamed in their willingness to buy their way to the top if that's what it takes. Why not Australia? How long have you got?

JD, I tried to focus on what we need to deal with. But will have a go. Why do I know better? Because the model you are saying we need to follow is a proven failure in Oz. It's what we've been doing since professionalism started and except for a glory run built of the back of the AIS, Dick Marks coaching plan, an exception coach in Rod Macqueen and generational players like Gregan, Larkham and Eales - it's failed. We are massively deep in debt trying to keep the lights on and about to head further into debt doing the same. We've been gifted a WC to try and get out of our financial problems but if we don't change our model, we'll just head straight down the unsustainable path again. You say copy Ireland not France - why? You say copy Scotland not England - again why? You say copy Wales - they are in almost as much trouble as we are. You say copy NZ - we've tried, we can't do it as well. Advise to just be better doesn't help. You say copy SA - well yeah, the world champs had players from 13 different teams in their WC champion side. Only 9 of the 23 played for an SA side. They had 14 players that play in France, Ireland and Japan in their 23, that's exactly what I'm arguing for. Will our national comp be as good as the NRC that the Bulls, Sharks, etc play in? Certainly not, at least at first. Hopefully we can come up with something that Aussies want to watch though, if we do that we can fix the finances and over time we can have better and better players in it. It's no quick fix but we can't just keep doing what we are doing, otherwise we'll wind up in exactly the same place and there won't be another World Cup hosting rights bailout to try and lift us out of trouble.

That could work JD, but defiantly not together IMO. Certainly don't see what other see in Skelton as a International player. But hey, I'm not a selector.