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Rumours from Drew Mitchell on the KOKO show - Cheika apparently being considered as CEO rather than head coach, with Grey the favoured contender on that front. All hearsay of course, but interesting nonetheless

Nope. Purely luring ABs into a false sense of security before trojan horsing their arses. Wobs to win the Bled, Schmidt to be anointed with the tears of his countrymen, all the while KB (Kurtley Beale) celebrates his 100th test.

I mean, I don't speak Spanish so can't comment on the context, but I wouldn't think Waugh would be speaking in USD. So unless Pichot's done the conversion, if he's saying 'Waugh told me $60m', you'd assume it's AUD.

I only watched a handful of Force games, but to me he seemed very sharp and (importantly) consistent.

RA's debt is well documented, so I'm not sure why there's any surprised remarks. The 2023 financial report had RA's debt at $89m (including $50m drawdown from the $80m PE loan) - if $60m is now being thrown around, we're on the up baby!

Beale's biggest attributes are his experience and rugby brain - the influence of which was noted most recently when he first arrived at the Force. With the number of young players in the team, I wouldn't be surprised if that's Schmidt's reasoning to (at least) have him in the squad.

Yeah - so clearly Swain's individual performance in the finals wasn't viewed favourably, with respect to what Schmidt had seen from the other contenders when they had last played. Swain's not automatically going to be picked over another player just because his team played for an extra 1 or 2...

Finals performance, individually speaking, is a lot more than win/loss

In my mind it's a reasonably even race between him, Daugunu, and Beale for the 23 jumper. Be interesting to see how Schmidt sees it

Henry won't be available (out 'til ~November), and weren't there reports of an injury to JOC (James O'Connor)?

It does look a bit brown in some of the imagery (more so on one of my screens than the other), but officially listed on their website as maroon

*Queensland rage intensifies*

You'd assume players had input as to which club was listed

Simon Zebo was saying on the KOKO pod the other week that Schmidt prefers more detail-oriented players - could explain some of the in/exclusions

There have been reports previously of international-based players paying for their flights back, yes.

??

Business if they're lucky, but more realistically an exit row - if at all. Players pay their travel back for Wallabies duties as I understand it.

It's all relative to norms though - that type of remuneration package may have been typical for employers in your industry, but it is not the case for employers of rugby players (i.e. across other competitions and codes). We have to remain competitive and realistic (in terms of both player...

Substantially reducing the base pay (read: attractiveness to players) to a mere fraction of what a player could be earning overseas, when we're already struggling to retain key talent in the competition, couldn't make things any worse?