Thanks Bob. I have avoided being too definitive about the end product. I did have a bit of a grand plan about having a final summary report with recommendations. Maybe akin to what I might do professionally in such a situation. It would make it easier for a group like the 10 Captains to start off with a definitive need to do something.

Firstly, I have achieved my goal of not being obsessed by rugby frustrations, I am sick of thinking and writing about it! I also probably did not get enough hard information from the floor to make definitive recommendations in some areas.

Anyone wanting background can read the articles and comments here. I have now purchased, and am reading, Geoff Parkes book and Dick Marks book. From what I have read so far Geoff anticipates as possible (probable?) we would reach where we are today, and Dick has been telling everyone for years this was going to happen. The catalyst for his book is that he feels nobody can deny it anymore.

So it will be sort of a list of things to do now. Some of it might be undeniable, a lot will require further work to confirm what needs to be done, or to get more information. The big difference will be urgency and transparency. Poorly scoped reports and surveys carried out in secret, with select bits published or leaked to support RA’s personal views will not change the course rugby is on.

Timing is loose but really it can’t go much past mid February, we all get distracted when real rugby starts, and the Waratahs go on a winning run. I intend to publish it here, and circulate it as widely as possible. Then it is off my plate, and in RA’s court.

Personally, I think I have moved my frustration/gloom/depression out of the way and hope to be a much better supporter of Easts and Waratahs this year. That is 3 from 3 so a good start to my year.

Plus that damn refereeing ticket …

Thanks Harry, really appreciate that.

Good question. I started off thinking I would just use this profile for the project and keep using Muglair but I started to hear voices.

Might go back to Muglair but it is a pretty ordinary disguise now. If I started criticising anyone, they will know who it is anyway. 😱

This is the great untapped attraction of professional rugby for young Australians. Why cry over a missed NRL/AFL career when you can travel the world, live in far off places and get paid to play rugby?

Thanks MK, appreciated your support. You should get a summer hobby though.

Not much of a swoop, they seemed to fall in each other’s laps.

I hope he enjoys his time in Sydney, and providing injury cover and experience on a value contract does not put anyone under a lot of pressure. Except the incumbents 😂

I think he was an excellent captain and must presume it is about the expectations of game time. A real shame that he has been unable to cement a position in the top echelon because I enjoyed watching him lead.

Still 24 is a long time before he hangs up his boots, and some players just find a way to rebuild their game into something different, and demand selection.

With so much PE involved driving revenue increases will be the number one priority.

I suspect Australia will become part of a global competition, a European centric solution which probably is not in our best long term interests.

If it makes RA profitable, that is at least a step in the right direction.

There is two out for the season apparently. Walton missed most of last year as well. Hope 2023 is better for him

I disagree TWAS. My understanding was that he wanted to play out his SR career at the Waratahs. Rather than ‘average’ and not stepping up to help Harrison, I thought he tried way too hard to try and lift the Waratahs who were struggling without the ball.

Nothing worked, and he looked poor himself, probably put even more pressure on Harrison and the Waratahs suffered. DR overlooked him for the Wallabies, as expected, and off KB went to France. Turned out the best thing for everyone.

The Mason expectation is probably a stretch, unless you remember very specific instances of his little time on the field.

KB will bring a lot of experience back into the Waratahs. He went to France because he was no longer required. He overplayed his hand in 2020 trying to compensate for an inexperienced team playing poorly. It was a good move for everyone that he left, and it will be a good move for everyone having him come back.

I would not be surprised if one of the reasons DR is keen for him to be available is the 180 degree opposite.

They look like they are already. Very upsetting re Joey Walton, a very good player already, but once the injuries start running together it can become a mountain to climb.

Roberts will hopefully be a very beneficial presence in the squad. If fit and starting, I can’t see him being a liability.

The longer I think about it, there has to be zero tolerance.

I do think it is worthwhile trying to educate the crowd. It is actually an interesting aspect of the game.

I think JC(?) was threatening to write an article or two on referees. It might be interesting to see a few articles written on how a referee prepares for a match, and how they referee one.

You are a good man Paine.

Waffle probably best describes the bulk of the rugby community pontificating about how complex the game is and why mere mortals outside the game can’t follow it.

On top of accepting that the players and coaches are operating at a level of complexity beyond my comprehension, I now am forced to acknowledge that referees do too?

I now understand the meaning of “humiliation knows no bounds”.

There has to be zero tolerance of abusing referees. In particular younger and inexperienced, as the game needs to encourage, not deter, them.

Is the shortened version, “everything is working really well”?

While some of my other comments stick, probably what I also meant is that every one wanting to watch rugby and evaluate the referee should read that document. In particular, it does not change much from year to year either (changes marked in red).

Have been thinking about this. My final conclusion is that you would not include the current arrangement.
RUPA is already a very influential stakeholder and the players have a bargaining agreement.
Your suggestion of the German model is the stuff of MBA case studies. Just transplanting an idea that might work in another country, with a different national and business culture and a different corporate legislative framework is just something that is never worth the time evaluating.
Furthermore the current employees are players and do not have the time to get involved, even if they had the inclination. Time spent out in the rugby community would be ten times more valuable to the game.
One serious problem is that there is no transparency on whether the two retired professional players are RUPA nominees taken straight on to the board, or whether the nominations process must turn up enough retired professional players to fill the vacancies.
The former is clearly a problem, making RUPA the most powerful stakeholder in the game, while the latter obviously has implications for whether the best applicants are being nominated to the board.
Australian Rugby has declined a long way since 2001 from being a valuable globally recognised sporting brand to one that is often ridiculed in the Australian market. Professional players have not contributed to building the brand, but rather been highly paid while it went into free fall.
A starting point in Rugby Australia’s recovery should probably immediately reduce their influence.

That just underlined in my mind why you need the top 50 referees in the room. Not officials, not coaches, not law making experts.

Just like the Top 50 players, they see the game differently to less experienced referees in Super Rugby, or experienced referees in community rugby. They probably also have a fair understanding of the tactics of international teams.

Refereeing strategy can be set and announced by world rugby but only on the advice of such a group. Consideration of law changes might also come out of their discussions, but equally they need to go through the mill of players and coaches, before going into the law making process.

That is true Ferret, but don’t isolate refereeing, it is part of the whole professionalisation in sport. Just like a communist dictatorship, the rugby community requires re-education, but we can’t send them all to a concentration camp.

Like the rest of this Project, it is rapidly coming back to the neglect of the game by Rugby Australia. Just about everyone on the Roar would agree to some extent, that the complexity of the game and its laws are a major barrier to introducing the sport to people outside the rugby community.

Referees have moved to a point, even within community rugby, that there has to be a more sophisticated approach to adjudicating the game, with the laws to be used as a tool to manage the game.

I personally think that if you can’t bring back rucking, then you are stuck with a lot of what we have. The focus needs to move away from the laws and firmly on to the battle for possession. That pretty much opens the game up to anybody who has fought a sibling over some object.

That all makes a lot of sense scrum. Add in the numbers of players who want to write a book on scrummaging and we are obviously years away from solving it.

In some ways at elite level, it makes sense, There are enough problems elsewhere and a crooked feed at least maximises the possibility for quick clean ball, without the need to penalise somebody.

In the GMG it talked about advantage, and playing on if the ball was safely available. Is that allowed at the elite level? There certainly seems to be a lot of opportunity for it, but refs seem to reset or penalise instead. Commentators point it out, but also on TV the camera tends to focus in, so maybe the ref sees no advantage to play on?

You just need to pray when World Rugby delivers its “Coaching Referee” series you are not featured in the Bloopers special feature 😂

Good stuff scrum. I want to comment on this in detail, but don’t have time today. “I’ll be back”. Definitely part of the way forward.

A fair summary of where we are today. I agree it would be nice to go back, but sadly the loudest complainers will never comprehend that they would enjoy the game better, if they were not the centre of attention.

This project is about finding ways forward, lamenting the past is only useful when it informs the future. If we do need to move forward to a similar or better place, we have to find a unique path forward to it, you won’t find it retracing the path we followed to get here.

I am getting the self-improvement angle, and even believe it. Its getting past the problem being the crowd behaves badly because they disagree with the decision. That cannot be an excuse to say, it is not our problem, they need to change.

There will never be agreement on the decisions, we both agree on that; poor vantage points, the fact that you overlooked five other breaches in deciding this was the critical one, ignored the same breach in the five previous rucks etc.

What I am pushing is to try and take the discussion up a level to referee tactics and intent. A more sophisticated discussion but maybe one which supporters can comprehend.