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Joined August 2018
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American...in Brussels...still playing...after 40 yrs...and still coaching...after 15 years; though coaching the ladies whilst playing with the men. Support Wallabies internationally + Leinster domestically + USA in 7s. "A good player is where the ball is , a great player is where the ball is going to be"
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Eddie Jones was only ever as good as his coaching staff; the last few years in England illustrated that to be the case. I can’t help but laugh at the suggestions that somehow Eddie, being Eddie, will fix this with a magical swing of a wand. This news IS good for Dan McKellar but it’s all part of a growing symphony of concern for the Wallabies.
Scorched earth Wallabies! EVERY one of Rennie's coaches now GONE in Eddie revolution
Absolutely mind-bending waste of very very limited resources. And RA and all Wallaby fans will come to regret this decision as a massive wasted opportunity. With so many key players coming back from injury next year and with Rennie’s efforts clearly and finally bedding in with the whole player group I was truly optimistic about how well the Wallabies would go at RWC2023. He has brought so many players up to Test level it’s amazing and he’s now being replaced by the Elon Musk of rugby: clever but intolerant of differing opinions, who loses and alienates key personnel as if they were coins in a holed-pocket and who believes intimidating mind-games help maintain his (false) aura of infallibility. England fans (and the many quality players inexplicably shunned by him) were delighted to see him go even if those few players he favoured were not. Scott Wisemantel clearly read the writing on the wall and got the hell out as he didn’t want to have to work with Jones again. Meanwhile, Jones’ attack strategies since RWC2019 have been an absolute disaster, and amateurishly boring to boot. Watch out that Jones doesn’t try and use Taniela Tupou as a kick receiver from his own 22….! What a f*** up by RA.
'Major coup': Rennie axed with Eddie Jones returning as Wallabies coach on mammoth deal for two Cups
I think the issue is that JOC has been forced to learn his #10 craft under the tutelage of Brad Thorn who has a tendency to want to overuse his forwards and to have everyone suffer and work and perform the way he did as an All-Black. I think the evidence on that point is clear even in how much he wants to keep Taniela Tupou on the pitch and involved off 10. Certainly JOC is not a graduate of Leinster’s slick and intensively used back’s, nor of the Crusaders’ equally expansive and well-oiled backs/forwards hybrid style of play so it’s a bit unfair for him to be compared to Sexton and Mo’unga. I still think that the 2013 Lions tour was won by a rather over-rated Gatland because Quade Cooper had fallen out with Robbie Deans and JOC was brought in to run the show at 10. In that respect BT and RD, though both clearly capable coaches, have the same history with QC and JOC which tellingly comes down to how hard-headed they are and how incompatible that trait is and was for QC to thrive but how JOC became their useful substitute. I’m still a fan of JOC in many ways but the 2021 Super Rugby Final between Reds and Brumbies also illustrated how poorly JOC was at converting regular and dominant carries into great attacking opportunities, especially in the final quarter of the match even though it was JOC himself who went and scored the final winning try. He ain’t no symphony conductor but he is a more than capable 1st Violinist.
ANALYSIS: 'Asking too much' - brutal truth behind James O'Connor's axing, and why Wallabies defence coach had to go
Too late for Samu alas, or Maddocks….
Now the dust has settled, what really went wrong?
It’s all the little things that bubble up when the Wallabies are under pressure but which don’t matter when they are being allowed to run rampant; how bad were the All Blacks in Perth!? In Auckland an unchallenged kick is merely observed by Lukhan Salakaia-Loto though he is standing right next to it when it lands right next to him and is gathered up by the smallest man on the field, Aaron Smith! At least Lukhan immediately tackles Smith…It’s the fact that for all his barn-storming and entertaining charges Marike Koroibete simply does not have the skill set of his peers in other test teams. Trying to run through people who can tackle by simply accelerating is never going to be enough, unless you’re Kerevi. (Thank your lucky stars that he at least is in the Wallabies for the RWC) Koroibete’ s passing is poor and he has no elusive skills other than speed and even then…. More importantly I have watched him time and again single-handedly “kill-off” a dead-cert try by simply not having the skill set to pull off a tiny bit of magic – a small grubber to the inside, a chip-kick to himself, a straight-forward draw and pass or a well-executed dummy – to guarantee the points. But for me his biggest weakness is his work around the park in defense. He has terrible “pendulum” skills. He was nowhere to be seen when the Beale-Hodge mistake on the opposite wing led to Mo’unga’s opening try. Again, try finding him whenever there is a break-through on the opposite side of the wing and meanwhile compare that to the observation of who came off his far-wing to stop Koreibete on his own failed run in the 1st half: t’was George Bridge! Finally, how can we ignore how often Koreibete has his ball turned over in the tackle and for that matter how often Isi Naisarani loses his ball in contact also! So, in spite of the new regime I am still perplexed by some selections: Koreibete obviously and Lukhan Salakaia-Loto. One bad game by DHP does not an exile deserve. One unfortunately-timed injury to Pete Samu does not mean he should be forgotten especially in light of the awesome performances he was putting in before his injury. For the rest I agree that Coleman – of whom I am a regular supporter – was very sub-par and sometimes simply standing in the way in between a Nic White pass and other more likely options. Final observation related to this article is that you seem to ignore Nic White’ s pointless kicks (let’s just give the All Blacks the ball now should we?) and the obvious re-energizing influence of Will Genia when he came on. This is not to say that Will Genia is better than Nic White but the Wallabies truly have two great 9s to pick and choose from with different qualities but most of them great. Conversely, as a big fan of T.J. Perenara I was surprised to see how poorly he performed when he came on to replace Aaron Smith so if anything, at least on the half-back front the Wallabies are in one of the strongest positions of all the Test teams for the RWC. Hey, let’ s take comfort where we can!
Now the dust has settled, what really went wrong?
It’s the adulterers and drunks I’m worried about!
In all seriousness this medieval hokey-poky nonsense about Hell is laughable and….completely irrelevant! If his employer, with whom he had just voluntarily signed a multi-year and multi-multi-dollar contract told him that as part of his contract he must not publicly condemn homosexuality or, for that matter, climb the roof of the Sidney Opera House at mid-day whilst naked and glistening in honey then he must abide by those terms. Plain and simple. Freedom of speech has nothing to do with this matter.
It is not very surprising however that someone whose poor interpretations of the Gospel should have a selective and patchy understanding of his employment contract…
Israel Folau does not deserve the sack
Bernard Laporte has some kind of “guru” powers and influence in France and yet he’s a buffoon. At the very most they should have trialed this policy in a specific region of France and then discovered after 3-5 years how many more injuries there were in that region from the age of 13, and after 10 years seen how (even more) crap their senior players had become. They already have crazy rules regarding University level rugby and when these folks come to play abroad they have to be taught a whole bunch of basics that hold them back. Incredible.
French Rugby bans tackling until under 13s
A couple of points about the this article:
– Shock! Horror! Stop the presses! A team captain says he has faith in his team-mates to get the job done! A Wallaby team-captain doesn’t start to pointlessly and most probably counter-productively publicly covet players who will never be eligible to play for Australia!
– So the problem is one of cronyism? So the solution then to this is to apparently get rid of the only coach in the world to have won rugby championships in both hemispheres and who then led the Wallabies within one year of coaching them to the final of the rugby world cup!!??
Yes, Australian rugby is in a jam and it is too parochial and in-bred and there is a woeful lack of depth (especially at 9 & 10!) and, unfortunately, to top all this off your most regular and talismanic opponent is the All-Blacks who have every position on the field covered by 3 to 4 simply awesome candidates. But the tiresome and simply moronic bitching about your head coach is not going to fix your problems. Though I might be inclined to thing a rejig of some of the assistant coaching positions might need some tweaking.
Same problem in Australia as in England and in France. Clubs have too much power and National Federation not enough, and in both cases there is a long history of some pretty poor stewardship. What has been going on at the Reds for example since 2011 is nothing short of laughable.
But fundamentally a little more realism is required as to where Australia is, and deserves to be, based on its preoccupation with other (lesser) sports and the opponents it continues to play: Ireland this year, England last year and 3 x the All Blacks each year! What did/do you expect? The Wallabies are not where they were in a rapidly evolving world of International rugby and not where they want to be but it is simplistic to blame one of your only proven entities as the source of all evil. But then it is always easier to tear down than to formulate solutions.
The Australian rugby system is the problem, not just Michael Cheika
Hammish McLennan’s fault, 100%. He’s the idiot who thought that a Wallabies team missing half of its starting players to injury and still nearly beating both France and Ireland in November ’22 needed to get rid of Dave Rennie and replace him with Eddie Jones who had woefully underperformed with England since their World Cup campaign in 2019. Hammish McLennan took a Rennie side that was clearly gelling in spite of chronic adversity and continually showing longer and longer passages of real cohesion and potential and handed it to a guy who gives good copy and loves League a tad too much; was there ANYBODY that didn’t think that Kurt-Lee Arendse would skip his way round Vunivalu all night long? (Vunivalu might be handy on a field with just 26 men but he’s shown little ability to find space on a field with 30.) One of the arguments for bringing in Eddie was that his appointment and his big mouth and cocksure swagger would help generate more interest in Union. But with lop-sided results to the detriment of the Wallabies like yesterday’s in Pretoria he’s just popped that fanciful balloon. Good one Hammish! Now tell us how you’re going to refill the coffers that you emptied to buy out Rennie’s contract, bring in Eddie and go shopping for League players, who are now probably having second thoughts themselves…!?
'Disaster': Wallabies hammered by Boks as Eddie Jones' return falls flat