No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, or why we died. All that matters is that two stood against many. That’s what’s important. Valour pleases you, Cron… so grant me one request. Grant me revenge. And if you do not listen, then to HELL with you!
Wallabies go for Mike Cron level scrum precision
The Wallabies coaching team will be increased by one Mike Cron (0.001 millimetres), the former All Blacks assistant coach and renowned “scrum doctor”.
The Guardian reports that the New Zealander helped prepare the All Blacks pack for more than 200 Tests and most recently worked as a consultant for World Rugby. Cron joins former ACT Brumbies defence coach “Lord” Laurie Fisher in an experienced backroom team to help prepare Australia for their first tests of the year against Wales and Georgia in July. Former Ireland coach Schmidt has also raided the Brumbies staff room for team manager Chris Thomson, a former high performance manager for World Rugby. The nickname “Tommygun” is currently awaiting approval.
“Mike has added tremendous value in every programme he has been involved with and brings a wealth of knowledge to our coaching group,” Schmidt said on Tuesday. “Knowing Chris from his time at World Rugby, he will work extremely hard behind the scenes to make sure we are well organised from an off-field perspective.”
Schmidt is expected to appoint a lineout coach but take charge of the Wallabies attack himself.
Nathan Williamson reports that Cron spent 200 test matches in the All Blacks system between 2004-19, including the 2011 and 2015 World Cups. He served as scrum coach for the first seven years before taking on a wider role including lineouts, mauls, breakdowns and kick offs. Cron then helped the Black Ferns in 2022 to the World Cup title. Since 2021, Cron has been employed by World Rugby as a set-piece consultant, including at the 2023 World Cup.
“For the World Cup I went there a week before it started and was based alongside the refs in Paris,” Cron said to the Irish Examiner in November. “Do you know what they call a quarter pounder with cheese in Paris?” Cron didn’t add. “I sat in a room with the ref bosses, analysing all the decisions. I was the only coach in the room, so we could have a discussion from the coach’s view on a lineout, ruck or tackle. I actually stayed with the refs in the hotel, so we could go for a cup of coffee and a chat. I think we made real progress.”
Mike’s nephew Simon the head coach at the Western Force.
Stop messing with the Laws – Rob Baxter
PlanetRugby reports that Exeter Chiefs boss Rob “differential with worn ring and pinion gears” Baxter has urged World Rugby to stop tinkering with the laws or risk alienating the new supporters the sport is trying so desperately to attract.
World Rugby have revealed a series of law proposals that will be voted on in May, but Baxter doesn’t believe they are needed. Among the proposals are 20-minute red cards, closing the offside loophole from kicks and introducing a free-kick law which could depower the scrum. There are also measures to enforce existing laws that are intended to speed up the game which have perhaps been neglected by match officials. This is where Baxter believes that World Rugby should be focusing their energy on, rather than the constant tinkering.
“We need to stop changing the laws. We’re trying to grow the game and there’s no sport in the world that tries to grow by confusing new supporters every 12 months,” he told reporters. “The game was fine three or four years ago, and we didn’t need to change it then – 90% of the law changes are to redo things that have been created by other law changes. It’s madness.”
Baxter, therefore, hopes that if new laws are introduced next month, it will be the last of the governing body’s meddling. “We’re preventing ourselves from allowing a good product to happen. If they decide to make law changes [in May] then they have to decide to put a moratorium on not changing them any more. Let’s settle down and get on with it. If there’s no free-kick option at a scrum then as soon as the scrum hits the floor or whatever, the back-row are going to be up. There are going to be so many things people haven’t thought about, like depowering the maul. The best way to create space on a rugby field is to power up the maul. When people say: ‘You can’t stop a maul,’ you can always stop a maul. You just have to put in as many or more people than the opposition. That’s how you stop it. People don’t wait to do it because then there’s space in which tries can be scored. But that’s the whole point. Keep the maul powerful so teams have to commit bodies to it. I just wish we’d stop changing the laws; it drives me potty.”
The Predator also worries about rugby
PlanetRugby reports that former All Blacks skipper, current Moana Pasifika head coach and El cazador trofeo de los hombres, Tana Umaga has voiced his concerns about the state of the game with low attendances at the centre of his worry. Crowd attendances have long been a concern for Super Rugby, even at the back end of the era that still included South African teams, and now, in the current iteration of Super Rugby Pacific, the issue remains.
“I worry about our game sometimes, how it’s going and obviously the numbers,” he told RNZ. “I love the game and I want to make sure that we’re doing everything that we can to keep it, grow it, or somehow bring people back to it because it is a great game. We have got to think about the product we are putting out. We want people to come to the games because as we’ve seen, those numbers aren’t as good as they used to be in the old days. We have just got to make sure that we keep the essence of what rugby is about, that’s our point of difference. That’s what makes us unique, and we don’t want to lose that. We don’t want to be following anyone else, we need to be innovative about what we do and trying to understand what people want so that we can give it to them.”
While the former centre did voice his concerns, he also praised the increased competitiveness of Super Rugby Pacific with special mention of how well the Australian sides have done so far this season. Umaga did joke that, “we don’t want them to build up too far too much,” before saying: “But it can only be good for rugby. Everyone’s coming closer. It means that there are more competitive games and hopefully people can see that this is something they want to watch and be a part of and I think that’s a great thing because it just builds the level of rugby,” he added. “The Australian teams have really stepped up. Obviously, they’re not happy with what happened with the Wallabies last year and now every team, every coach, every player realises that they don’t want to be there again.”
G&GR also reached out to Major Alan “Dutch” Schaefer who responded “If it bleeds, we can kill it.”
NZ clubs remove junior rugby fees
Paul Cully for Stuff reports that Counties Manukau have launched a bold pilot scheme to remove junior rugby fees in south Auckland after the initiative at Manurewa Rugby Club sparked a massive increase in player numbers.
In a strategy that is certain to draw interest throughout the country, 11 Counties Manukau clubs will axe junior player fees this year, with the provincial union using a BNZ term deposit return from the $1 million Silver Lake cash injection to assist with covering the cost. Long-term sponsors PIC Insurance Brokers are also on board, and the scheme will benefit thousands of youngsters, and their parents.
Manurewa began the initiative in 2021 in response to falling junior numbers post-Covid, and club secretary Renee Maxwell, who is also now a Counties Manukau board member, told Stuff the impact of parents not having to pay her clubs’ $60 junior fees had been transformational. “We went from having just over 200 kids registered in 2019 to about 150 in 2020,” she said. Post zero-fee experiment: “We went from 187 registrations to 278 in 2021. We then said, ‘Ok, this is good and let’s keep doing it. We went from 278 to 312 in 2022, and then last year we had 438 juniors registered at our club.”
The union has launched an opt-in pilot scheme this year, and 11 of the 17 clubs are taking part as parents battle with a cost-of-living crisis. Maxwell said the surging junior numbers were just one part of the story. In the space of three years, parents flooded into the club to lend a hand and the seniors won back-to-back club championships in 2022 and 2023, ending a drought that had lasted for more than 20 years.
“We had five under-six teams and coaches for every single one of them because we brought those parents,” she said. “On a Saturday, to see how amazing our club is…we’re jam-packed full. We also went from having maybe four or five committee members to having 12, because those parents were like, ‘Oh, this is what they’re doing’.”
New Counties chief executive Chad Shepherd said that the union was on track provide about $100,000 to cover the clubs’ lost junior fees, and commended the clubs’ leap of faith. “Rugby is our national sport, but it’s very lucky that it still currently is,” Maxwell said. “We’re going to lose kids to all sorts of other different sports. But what can we do to bring them back into rugby and bring them back into the game that we love?”
G&GR has called an un-named Australian rugby administrator about offering free junior rugby registrations to western Sydney kids, only to be verbally abused for “making me spit perfectly good cognac on an expensive Persian rug”.
