Roar Rookie
Joined September 2018
13.6k
Views
4
Published
8
Comments
Published
Comments
After what has been one of Rugby Australia's most tumultuous periods, including the Israel Folau saga and our underperforming Wallabies, RA has decided to…
Andrew Hore said this week there were three reasons why there were only 10,000 at the Waratahs' game against the Sharks on Saturday night.…
It was interesting to hear last week the discussion about Rugby Australia rebranding itself. No doubt this sounds like a good marketing ploy, especially…
It was interesting to read such an honest and factual account of rugby with the death of the second tier player. While there are…
Hey David, I think it is the coaching that is the problem. It seems most coaches are preoccupied with winning (and there is no doubt that this is important) over teaching skills. Just look at the best of our schoolboy competitions and many private schools employ outside coaches (on big money) to coach their First XVs and because of this, winning takes preference over teaching skills. One strong point about Sth African and NZ schools rugby is that coaches take their teams right through from an early age to the First XV. For example, if you coach the 14 A’s in one year, you take them through to the First XV. This way you have a team for a few years and you can focus on skills and become skilled yourself (especially if you want to coach First XV) and you don’t have to justify your pay! One of the greatest skills coaches I have ever seen was former Wallaby Stephen James (now Skills coach with Canterbury Bulldogs) who took a junior Eastwood team and they never lost a game in 7 years (they did however, lose a State championship with a draw). His focus was always on skills and half of every training session was spent on these skills. There were games when he even refused to allow the boys to kick the ball out of their 22, they had to work and run it out. One only has to look at who RA employed as their defensive coach a few years ago, Nathan Grey who was coming off coaching the Waratahs to their worst defensive season ever. Look at our Senior coaching stocks, there’s not much out and now one of brightest coaching candidates, Simon Cron, is now going to Japan. What hope have we got?
Waratahs miss platinum opportunity in the Golden West
Yeah team selection has been a problem for a number of years, ever since our heady success days of the 90’s when players were selected for their positions and played in their positions and that’s where they stayed. The Horans, Littles, Larkhams, Burkes, Campeses, Lathams and Mortlocks of the world played in their specialist positions. Sure sometimes they may have played at 14 or 15, but that was where their experience lay. Just look at how much our backline changes every game. Is Beale a 10,12,13, 14 or 15? He played much of his junior rugby at 10. I never knew Foley was a 12, maybe they should give him a run at 13 or 14. What about Ashley Cooper, great player but look at where he has played. Toomua is a 10, but look at where else he plays (imagine playing Campese at 13 when he was such a good 11/14. You would have destroyed him – and the team). You don’t see NZ changing their positions around, if there is another player in form they get selected and the player they replace ends up on the bench until their turn comes (if I remember rightly, Barrett spent half a season on the bench. Like Campese, imagine playing Lomu at 13). Rugby can be such a specialist game that you can’t keep changing players and their positions around. It just doesn’t work. Let’s pick players for their positions and if need be sit others on the bench or make them go away and rejuvenate themselves and I am sure they will come back hungrier and be better players for it. Meanwhile, they selected players can hone their skills in the correct positions.
Why the answers for Australian rugby are blowin’ in the wind
Horse has bolted, ARU should have done something ten years ago. What is often forgotten is that it doesn’t matter how many coteries are set up or how many forums you have, in the end it is up to individual principals to decide what sport is played in schools and unfortunately, because of pressure of academic success, principals are loath to allow anything that may undermine this.
Why rugby won't survive
Hey Gloria, any school that has an electronic scoreboard or electronic sidelines or use GPS trackers for their players obviously have plenty of money to spend, Throw in specialist coaches who are on huge contracts to win their school a title and yes you have a private system that is propping up the Wallabies. Shame they don”t use the South African model of schools coaching whereby the coach of a junior team takes his team right through to the First XV, thus not only improving his own coaching skills, but encouraging him to actually coach his team and thus develop their skills. I am constantly amazed at the lack of skills our representative players have and again maybe we need to improve our coaching skills.
Why rugby won't survive
Your comment endorses my message, rugby is dying in schools. I went to a public school and back then there was a rugby competition in state schools and I played in the Sydney North competition that stretched from Homebush all the way to Asquith and can you believe it, even James Ruse High had a team and a pretty good one at that. Interesting that based on your age and when you probably finished school (2008?), in the 2008 NSW Schools trials, GPS defeated CHS by over 50 points. When I look at the Sydney North Sports Association 2018 Knockout draws, rugby doesn’t even rate a mention. The old Waratah Shield is pretty much dead and has been replaced with the Waratah Cup and as mentioned earlier, it was won by a rugby league school this year.
Why rugby won't survive
Don’t agree, whilst there are some significant differences, especially amongst forwards, league players can be trained to play rugby, I’ve done it. See who won the Waratah Cup this year – Patrician Brothers Blacktown, a rugby league school!
Why rugby won't survive
Problem with this is that the Academy caters for just 50 kids who may be lucky enough to make these two teams. Whilst most Australian Schools players in the past have come from the private system, it again fails to factor in the other 83% of kids who don’t go to private schools and may be getting lost to other codes. If our junior community rugby programs were are strong as they were in the past, then hopefully a lot of these kids may have been picked up through this. But as we all know, these programs are dying with fewer kids playing rugby on a weekend (maybe this is where we should be focussing). Whilst some may extoll Castle for doing something about it with the Academy (and I doubt if she actually had anything to do with it), what is being done to promote and develop junior programs? It is interesting that RA have said that they will continue to monitor kids playing on weekends and in schools, the fact is that this is not catering for the many thousands of possible potential players out there (because it is just recognising those kids in the private system who play any regular rugby). I would always encourage both RA and Schools to work together (as they have in the past), but such an Academy undermines just what school programs can offer. If, as has been suggested, we should ‘cast the net wider’, then just how wide do we go? To NZ or other parts of the world to find senior coaches? I wasn’t aware that we had a ‘wide net’ in Australia and maybe this is the problem for Australian rugby and until we can develop and promote Australian coaches – and this is often done through schools, we will continue to languish behind the world. Let’s just hope that Rennie can bring something to the table, at least we can’t go much further down the rankings and so he is starting from a fairly low base. Maybe if he can have some success, then we can extoll the virtues of Castle, who has until now, been a fairly faceless CEO.
Rugby Australia goes it alone