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Maybe worth posting the Rennie Wiki entry, it's largely unadorned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Rennie Any rugby man that owned and ran a pub called the Lonely Goat Herd can't be all bad.

Oh OK, really, so that all just auto-translates to successful winning Super teams? If I post below the Wiki entry for the NZ Chiefs you may see that Rennie - despite these reams of wonderful players you attest are just hanging out of Waikato milk bars - there took a 'disappointing' Chiefs...

Re (1). I would not fret over that. These departure were some time ago - esp re EJ (Eddie Jones) - and with different ARU CEOs etc in charge. I think both these men have the personal maturity and robustness to overcome historical spats with the then ARU and such like. And RA needs to bend over backwards to...

Just please indulge an aside: I'd love to be sitting next to Link as he watched the end of Cheika's Wallaby career unfold over that final 80 minutes in Oita. I wonder what he would have been thinking. I wonder if he wonders: what might have been for me if not for the Patston affair, the...

Well, if you wish to argue that way, factor in if you must some imagined lower w-l % of EJ (Eddie Jones) in some imagined 'playing the ABs more often' scenario, I still believe that speculatively imputed % number would well exceed the w-l % outcomes of a Cheika. Maybe too you should in balanced, objective...

Really. Have a serious think re (a) where RA's gross income line is headed post Foxtel's renegotiation from 2021 (much written about that) combined with (b) declining RA Wallaby gate income (and the 2019 RWC outcome will only seriously exacerbate that problem) and (c) many of our best young...

Do you mean by chance that the ARU/RA made two serious mistakes in judgement in a row? How is that even possible? ;)

That EJ (Eddie Jones)'s Test w-l ratio with England since 2016 is ~ 80% doesn't impress you? IMO over nearly 4 years, that is his greatest achievement thus far, up there with the very best in those terms, and, like it or not, winning a lot is what matters in pro sports.

I wonder how any of those three, at that top level, considered they’d build a really thriving and successful Wallaby team or RWC outcome with that state of relations (or lack of relations to quote MC) between them.

How many times in years gone by on GAGR have we rightly bemoaned the awful state of elite Australian rugby kicking skill both at place and from hand? Dozens, hundreds of times? Regarding this negative condition a dark and deeply concerning fact must be this: M Byrne, lauded for years by the...

The serious danger signs that 2015's RWC relative Cheika coaching 'success' was but a combination of fortuitous circumstances unlikely to be ever repeated came swiftly enough with the pathetic and clueless Wallabies performances re England in mid-2016 when we came not close to winning a single...

Cyclo, you know my views and along with others here I have argued since ~ 2011/12 that Australian rugby is in a slow but inexorable death spiral for the essential reason that is incompetently and negligently governed from the very top, and that 'top' is rooted in a set of introverted, inbred...

Isn’t that what the cynics and doubters said of Japan 5-7 years ago? But, today, 2019, is not this team a shining example of the unarguable power of sustained rugby coaching quality in depth and, related, player skills development in depth. And there are no ‘outstanding’ players in the Japan...

If RA remains true to form, and its precise mechanisms for indulging proven mediocrity, they’ll be announcing that M Cheika ‘.....after many years of devoted service to Australian rugby, has been invited to join the board of Rugby Australia as non-executive member responsible for coaching...

Yes. It’s really only RA that, as the ultimate supervising institution, could rightly be considered more culpable.

= NZRU's deep investment in mental skills coaching for their elite layers = Gilbert Enoka leading that program as previous mental skills coach of the ABs for many years (and if one studies what he's been doing in this area over the last decade, it's very innovative and strategically smart)...

Yes. Many will disagree but if we win the Bledisloe it will do more to uplift rugby in Australia than if we win the RWC but yet again sacrifice the BC. Like it or not, Australian sports lovers care more about what they see and repetitively know close to home than that which occurs in far away...

Observations: In retrospect, should Hansen have departed the ABs with reputation intact in (say) 2017 and avoided a potentially embarrassing year for this team in 2019? In prospect, in 2019 has the belated introduction of (a) an expanded and more objective selection panel and (b) the...

Slim - essentially I agree. Moreover: IMO if we look very closely at Cheika's manifest (by results) failings as an HC, the most compelling failure in areas of specialist coaching has been in two dimensions: (a) Cheika's continuing refusal to appoint a true specialist forwards coach (by which...

Talk here of experimentation and ‘trying things out’, or such like for this Test. Pre RWC of course, and all that. Grander objectives at stake. Hmmm. What about just an obsessive attempt to win this Test, whatever it takes. A few punters are paying upwards of $100 a seat, in hope, if not in...