Beale can be great and it is good organiser and communicator. It is his second good game, he, White and Donaldson have the opportunity to form a good combination in the next couple of weeks. This could be good for the Wallabies as well.

They had to say something about the Force although it is not making sense. The Force need to write this season off and focus on preparing for next season. This is like having a close family member in jail. You still love them , visit them often, think of them, however prefer not to talk about them.

I change triggered by a single incident in a single game… that will change rugby forever.

NZ also slow the game down when it suits them…it is part of the game. It will continue as usual.

Would have been great if the Force could have loaned a prop from the Rebels when we had the front row injuries. However with RA owning the license of the Tahs and Rebels it is probably more doable between those two franchises.

I don’t think it is a coaching issue, it is a recruitment issue. Injuries played a role but the core problem is the lack of quality and depth among the forwards as recruiters missed their targets. The Force has been like a dog that is chasing its tail – the preseason was good but after the preseason games they struggled to field a healthy team. We need to understand what caused this injury toll as it would not only have been bad luck. Cron had to bring competitiveness into training however it seems that he didn’t have the squad depth to do that.

…the players don’t seem to have desire or an emotional impact to losing.

The Force started the season with an under strength pack, then suffered a devastating injury toll, lost a few games we should have won and got used to losing. Every subsequent loss is a little less painful than the previous one. The current team sheet doesn’t have many players that spend the preseason with the Force as reinforcements was desperately recruited. If these players were part of the squad at the start of the season the season in my mind would have played out very differently. Parachuting players into the starting squad are also not good for morale, team identity or cohesion – which is what you need at this stage of the season when the tough needs going. This season’s lesson is exactly the same lesson that we failed to learn last year – we can’t expect to win games without a quality forward pack. If you want to spend money, don’t waste it on backs if you don’t have the forward to give them good ball.

Cheika will be a terrible assistant. Not a good idea. Once you tasted the power of being head coach it is difficult to go back to the floor to do the hard yards. A head coach position will become available, he just needs to wait.

How is that going?

That depends on what you think the alternative was: a bloody communist revolution or a better democratic dispensation eg federation. The ANC has definitely been a disaster just like the apartheid regime but it could also have been worse.

No Adam, I have not made a comparison just rejecting the idea that progressive is always preferable. I prefer the word Western as I think the focus on the individual of our Western culture comes with a high price. I stated that I prefer to live in a progressive society: I am well educated, with skills other are willing to pay for – my high income allow me to sidestep many of the pitfalls of our society. It is a personal and depends on your values. Our “progressive societies” are becoming increasingly self centred.
When I was walking with my wife down Medina road in Mexico City last week we noticed many multi-generational families (5+ generations) enjoying each other’s company and wonder when we last saw four generations together in Australia. When I returned to Australia we noticed the elderly dumped and forgotten in an age care facility near our home. My mother in law lives there and we are well aware that many of the elderly have not seen or spoken to their family for years. This is not the exception – very sad.
It is true that there are more choices if you live in a rich Western society, however some choices like having a family is beyond the means of many. In our “progressive society” our children study at least two decades to be employable and then work another two decades to put a roof over our head and repay a mountain of study debt. After almost drowning in debt, by the time they come up for air, their body clock ran out… another choice that they could not afford.
Let’s not pretend that Western society do not have problems or are superior in every aspect to others.

Sport as a weapon has not been that effective anyway. South Africa moved forward when both parties found common ground. The ANC (temporary) abandoned communism after fall of the Soviet Union and the white government abandoned race based segregation. There is a lesson for the Palestinian conflict that peace is only possible if both sides are prepared to change their positions.

All Blacks captain Graham Mourie and centre Bruce Robertson didn’t just say they disapproved of apartheid. They made themselves unavailable for the Springbok tour of 1981.
South African society is still unfair to those that finds themselves at the mercy of an oppressive system. Race based apartheid has been replaced by wealth/opportunity based apartheid.
South Africa has the highest level of income inequality among nations where there are reliable data to calculate a Gini coefficient. The black economic enrichment policies were intended to redistribute wealth to the poor, however was designed to produce many extremely wealthy and politically well connected billionaires (including cabinet ministers). The vast majority are poor, unemployed or earn very low incomes. The black rich and middle classes outnumber whites today by more than an order of magnitude. The black enrichment policies compromised on merit that caused a collapse of public services with the vulnerable suffering the most. Every public service declined, collapsed or is close to collapsing including the supply of electricity, potable water, policing, the judiciary system, sewerage, sanitation, maintenance of public infrastructure, health services and public education. If you don’t have money you can’t afford a private school education, private security, private health care, good food, clean bottled water, a swimming pool to rinse your toilet, a SUV to drive around and over the potholes in the streets, a private investigator etc. Poverty is increasingly prevalent among all races with several white and mixed race squatter camps emerging in the past two decades. There you will find experienced engineers and tradies that are unemployable as employment policies discriminate against their race.
Will the NZ and Australian woke refuse to play an “unfair” society if the unfairness is not dressed up in colour?

Even if you “visit” non traditional tourist areas, you still walk away with a tourist perspective and would not understand how difficult it is to make a living in that society.

I look at some of the products of our progressive society: young men that assault women and the elderly, the breakdown of the family, domestic abuse, swearing, disrespectful behaviour in public, drug abuse and the abuse of first responders and wonder if being progressive is all it is made up to be. However I do prefer progressive society with our progressive problems but others may not.

I think that would be a great idea in the absence of a proper Tier 3 competition.

Good signing. We need a forward pack including bench to give our backline front foot ball to play with. Local players like Pearce are progressing but the step-up is still too big. Now to secure Rodda and Carter for next season and make sure Caxton stays with the two #2s we are getting a competitive tight five.

Force fans will argue that we are last when it comes to scheduling including matches played at 5pm on a Thursday afternoon.

Rugby is resilient and will survive, it always does. Rugby is a big sport, it survived wars, epidemics etc, it will get by within the Rebels. Doing well is more subjective and a different argument.

How did the Rebels stem the decline in spectator numbers? The crowds in Melbourne are part of the problem not the solution. The Rebels formation was all part of the 20 year decline of Rugby in Australia. We are at a tipping point as rugby in Australia does not generate sufficient revenue to cover its cost, we need to change the way the game is structured and part of that is to live within our means.

‘Covid only impacted from the 2020 season.’ Absolutely not.
Maybe you want to edit the absolutely not.
Even they’re wise enough to know they can’t cut two teams out of five at once. They had the option to negotiate a deal with Forrest and save one of the franchises.
What they did was fail to distribute talent with a system like New Zealand to make the team quickly competitive so it’s only becoming so now. I agree with this sentiment, however the Rebels received dispensation to sign more overseas players that the Force did to build the competitiveness of their squad and feasted on the 2nd best Aussie team in 2017 carcass after RA axe of Force in favour of the Rebels.
If the Rebels fail rugby in Australia will collapse. That must be you opinion as I don’t follow the logic here either. Rugby in Australia will do well as it did before the Rebels. If RA continue to bail out the Rebels Rugby Australia will collapse.
The best case would be for a private financial backer to step to the plate and put the Rebels on a solid footing, put responsible management in place and build up rugby from the bottom up in Victoria. We do need a SR franchise in each population centre in Australia, but we can’t continue to run the Rebels thr way it has been run since its inception. If Melbourne loses the Rebels the Rebels Board and management surely needs to step up and take responsibility for their decisions.

I expect RA are not to be blameless as their track record is not good either.

The Rebels Directors however should not be resolved as they spend like teenagers on the assumptions that dad will pay their credit card. Even if dad said he would pay I would expect that the Director’s should have had it at that in writing before committing to the spending. It is reckless from experienced people that should have known better.

We have seen with the Force when RA managed to get hold of the Force’s operating license on the pretence of signing an Alliance and Support Agreement (and did the opposite of what that agreement was supposed to do). The Rebels lost their license and will find that RA can do with their properly as they wish. It is time for RA to stop throwing good money at the Rebels and wrap up their expensive mistake as the Rebels needs to have a sustainable financial future to continue.

It is either trading while insolvent or spending money on a representation (verbal?) that someone else will pay their bills in the future. A responsible director will be aware of their duties and will ensure that they have a very clear line of sight of how the commitments they make will be funded.

If RA wanted to axe the Rebels for a long time would they not have done it in 2017? If RA didn’t assist in the bail out the Rebels would have been liquidated.
Please explain how the Rebels was impacted by covid prior to 2020, as I don’t understand your logic.
I agree that RA expanded too early to five franchises before there was a sustainable market for rugby union in Melbourne. I prefer that the Rebels survive it they need a financial backer like Twiggy to do so. RA do not have the financial resources to sustain any pet projects or such a deep money pit.

The financial issues predated Covid as PWC said, the Rebels directors were likely trading while insolvent from the end of 2018. Covid only impacted from the 2020 season.
The Rebels have been a financial disaster for RA. They need someone that has enough wealth to satisfy their appetite to spend and that is not the current consortium.

Good article Geoff, however the longer term viability of the Rebels remains a concern despite the DOCA. RA went to infinity and beyond to save the Rebels in 2017, to just end up with the too familiar situation where they are expected to bail them out again. How many times would they be insane enough to do the same and expect a different outcome?

The Force defence was terrible, it is not a coaching issue as the structure was good, it was defenders falling off tackles. This is a morale issue that happens when you lost urgency and are not prepared to put your body on the line.