Australian Rugby / RA

[Rugby Central]

There's a tactic that you use in politics when you want to announce new policy or infrastructure - create the problem, and then solve it.

But now they are open to the criticism they have received here. It's change for change's sake. There is no evidence that this was ever needed, and now of course it's a crucial change.

Evidence Exhibit A - Cheika's insistence on a 5 year deal for a player who is 1) not the best player in that position and 2) playing in the only position Australia has consistently brought through players recognized as the best in that position. Look at any list of Australian openside flankers who never got to consistently hold the gold jumper and nearly all of them would have made 50+ games, at number 7, for every country except NZ.

Signing any player to a 5 year contract will discourage young players from committing to the game as there's nowhere to go. But doing it for a position where Australia has an embarrassment of riches shows Cheika (and RA) are completely out of their depth.

 

[Derpus]

Evidence Exhibit A - Cheika's insistence on a 5 year deal for a player who is 1) not the best player in that position and 2) playing in the only position Australia has consistently brought through players recognized as the best in that position. Look at any list of Australian openside flankers who never got to consistently hold the gold jumper and nearly all of them would have made 50+ games, at number 7, for every country except NZ.

Signing any player to a 5 year contract will discourage young players from committing to the game as there's nowhere to go. But doing it for a position where Australia has an embarrassment of riches shows Cheika (and RA) are completely out of their depth.

Source?

 

[dru]

I agree. Who knows if anything they've done is actually effective. We'll have to wait and see. But prima facie they seem to be moves in the right direction.

RA have long lost entitlement to the benefit of doubt.

 

[Derpus]

RA have long lost entitlement to the benefit of doubt.

So, even if they do something apparently positive we have to assume it's a bad move? I can't be fucked being that negative.

 

[barbarian]

So, even if they do something apparently positive we have to assume it's a bad move? I can't be fucked being that negative.

You really don't fit in here, do you.
.

 

[KiwiM]

https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby...t-johnson-the-wallabies-new-director-of-rugby

In a hard-hitting article Alasdair Reid, Scottish rugby correspondent for The Times, labelled Johnson "Scotland's invisible man" and questioned his input over the past five years

.......................................................................................................

Johnson remained in charge of Scotland and the 2014 Six Nations was a disaster, including a 20-0 humiliation by England at Murrayfield and a record 51-3 thrashing by Wales in Cardiff.


"Under Johnson, supposedly a guru of attacking rugby, they went through the entire campaign without scoring a single try against any of the other home nations. When Cotter finally arrived, Johnson could not have looked more relieved to be passing the baton," Reid wrote in The Times.

Reid noted that without actual coaching responsibilities Johnson "underwent a remarkable transformation" as he concentrated on his director of rugby role.

"To all intents and purposes, the fast-talking, wisecracking, larrikin Johnson disappeared from public life.

"The disappearing act was so successful that Johnson, the most senior rugby figure in the Murrayfield administration, was not mentioned by name in any of the past three SRU annual reports. The union tried to argue that he was working quietly and diligently behind the scenes; the first part was true, the second part open to question."

Reid felt it was "debatable" whether Johnson could be linked to the lift in performance by Scottish clubs. Classy coaches Dave Rennie (Glasgow) and Richard Cockerill (Edinburgh) had been lured by "paying the going rate".

"In truth, as nobody really knew what Johnson was meant to be doing, nobody could be quite sure if he was any good at it,"surmised Reid.

 

[RedsHappy]

So, even if they do something apparently positive we have to assume it's a bad move? I can't be fucked being that negative.

Not quite, of course not quite.

But given RA's appalling track record in almost all matters strategic and tactical re the governance of rugby in Australia over at least the last 5-7 years (some would argue much longer), we should be exceedingly cautious re assessing 'apparently positive' RA actions until such times as the hard, demonstrable results from such are their own positive validation.

[Of course an amusing aspect of the history here re RA's policies and actions is that for many years there existed a body of hyper-loyal posters who auto-endorsed any ARU/RA action as good, positive, enlightened whatever and passionately patronised and attacked quite personally posters who expressed major concerns re RA's capabilities, judgements and policies. Thankfully that era of GAGR trench warfare seems now over, I guess because the facts of the ultimate outcomes are so compelling.]

 

[Quick Hands]

Selection panel, DoR, New youth pathways, increased participation/co-operation between national and Super Rugby teams.

I'm not passing judgment on their effectiveness. I'm just saying, plenty of people here have been saying 'look at Scotland and Ireland, we need to emulate them and their methods'. Which is true, they have a lot of parallels with us. They have limited resources, a limited playing pool, are by no means the most popular sport in their country etc. They also both had Australians involved in their recent successes.

So we make moves to put in place a similar structure (or whatever you want to call it) and everyone explodes, mostly because they want Cheika gone despite there being no good replacement till post RWC. It's silly. Even if they are fucking useless and have cocked up constantly in the past, these attempts at meaningful long term change are better than just sacking this person or that and getting in someone else despite doing nothing to address the real underlying issues.

But what precisely is this new structure? I'll preface what I say next by noting that I think that having Scott Johnson in a senior coaching/development role is a good thing. The big BUT is that they've just added a postion to the organisation - a position which seems to have significant overlap with other recent appointments - Whittaker and Kafer for example.

I'll defer final judgement on the basis that I'll wait to see if RA produce an organisational structure for coaching and development from Wallabies down to juniors and community rugby in which there a clear lines of responsibilities and logical/functional role descriptions. At the moment, it seems like standard ARU/RA which is to ad hoc appointments and/or add layers and give no thought as to how it will impact on other programmes - remember the Junior Gold Cup, the ARC, the NRC (which has morphed from having some relationship with the levels below to an unappealing non-event), Rod Kafer, etc.

Barely 12 months ago Clyne and Pulver announced a complete restructure of High Performance with the money saved from axing the Force. What happened to that money? (pissed up against the wall?)

See article complete with flow chart and diagrams.
http://www.espn.com.au/rugby/story/...rugby-union-high-performance-how-does-operate


"The money we'll save by cutting a team will be directly reinvested into grassroots rugby and our high performance systems," the duo insisted.
"High performance" was mentioned ad nauseum.
On the surface of it, the ARU's willingness to reinvest the money available after axing the Force - the financial benefit of the decision, as Clyne explained it - will be good for the game in Australia, especially in the long term. That is, of course, providing one understands what "high performance" actually means. At the aforementioned ARU April press conference, the term appeared to be used as nothing more than a bit of PR spin. So ESPN set out to better understand the term, and just what it means for Australian rugby.


And I loved this bit - preferring the Rod Kefer method to one which has proven to work in NZ (typical RA)


Mexted reveals to ESPN that he met members of the Australian Rugby Union high performance team, at the direction of board member John Eales, in the hope of replicating something similar to IRANZ in Australia. South Africa has already done so with its Investec Rugby Academy. But Australia opted against an academy in the IRANZ mould, with Mexted saying he believed the ARU was keen to use the formula but wasn't prepared to outsource it across the ditch. Mexted also told ESPN that he could understand why Australia would not want to be seen replicating a New Zealand-built program, particularly given Robbie Deans' mixed performance as Wallabies coach.
"We're prepared to give and [the ARU] said, 'well, how will this work?',"Mexted tells ESPN. "And I said: 'Well, let's work it out, I'm open minded. We can have some sort of joint-venture, you can set up as a licensee and we'll bring all our intellectual property, which is how to run it and we'll run it and we'll grow your staff. Whatever. You tell me how you want to run it.
"So anyway, bottom line was they didn't want to do it; that's it as far as I'm concerned ... what they've done is they've looked at what we're doing and tried to emulate that ... without the expertise and without knowing how to pull it together. There's two different things there."

 

[KOB1987]

https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby...t-johnson-the-wallabies-new-director-of-rugby

Not that I claim to know a lot about Scott Johnson, I'm prepared to take a post about Australian rugby on an Australian rugby forum by a kiwi sourcing an article from a kiwi website in turn sourced from an article in an English paper written by their Scottish rugby correspondent with a bit of a grain of salt.

 

[Derpus]

Not that I claim to know a lot about Scott Johnson, I'm prepared to take a post about Australian rugby on an Australian rugby forum by a kiwi sourcing an article from a kiwi website in turn sourced from an article in an English paper written by their Scottish rugby correspondent with a bit of a grain of salt.

Not to mention the article really only talks about the absence of any information on which to judge the man. Damning stuff.

 

[dru]

Not that I claim to know a lot about Scott Johnson, I'm prepared to take a post about Australian rugby on an Australian rugby forum by a kiwi sourcing an article from a kiwi website in turn sourced from an article in an English paper written by their Scottish rugby correspondent with a bit of a grain of salt.

He’s been in Scotland for 5 years. Where did you expect to find a relevant source - the Manly Daily?

 

[dru]

Some of the criticism seems a bit exuberant to me

OTOH If you can’t see the legitimacy of a concern in further centralised power under Clyne from your own observations it is likely to be beyond my ability to clarify it for you.

But let’s not build straw men.

1. It isn’t centralisation that is a problem but centralisation under this leadership
2. It isn’t the role of DoR that is a problem, it’s the previous determination against followed by rushed decision making, a lack of transparency and a process highly unlikely to have found the best candidate
3. It isn’t additional off-field resource that is a problem, it’s that this is done in an environment of publicised cash problems and a complete lack of concern raised anywhere that off-field was a problem

 

[fatprop]

Good podcast with Tirinui & Kimber re the Dir of Rugby

https://www.therugbyruckus.com/#podcast

 

[RedsHappy]

Raelene C has brought new clarity to the respective role definitions of Wallaby HC and the new Director of Rugby. I for one find them compelling and can see how they might usher in an entirely new capability in Wallaby performances whilst reversing 2016-18's somewhat worrying performance trend (my emphasis below, extracted today from www.rugby.com.au):

"Exactly how Johnson's role will balance with Cheika remains to be seen but Castle said it would leave the current Wallabies coach to focus on the on-field aspects of the national side.

"That will be something they will work through," she said.​

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"Michael's focus and direction is to concentrate on the Wallabies, so he will be leading everything to do with the Wallabies' on-field performance and Scott will be looking at the off-field focus areas of the Wallabies around athletic performance and sport science and sport psychology and all of those areas.​

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"That's where, the relationship, yes they will work closely together but Michael will be leading the on-field elements of the Wallabies."​

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[fatprop]

The above podcast made an interesting point, this is the first serious decision made by Castle - and it isn't a short term fix but setting up structures to hopefully improve Wob world long term

 

[RedsHappy]

It's also gratifying to see Chairman Clyne relaxed and comfortable with Cheika and the Wallaby set-up. There is the future to look forward to. And, most particularly, that 'processes' are being adopted and followed (from today's www.rugby.com.au):

Rugby AU chairman Cameron Clyne said there was no panic about making that call despite the World Cup looming less than a year away.

"We're comfortable with, we don't play the first Test match until July next year, we have a continuous Super Rugby season next year so there's four months before we actually play a Test. We're comfortable that we can manage that time."

"I think the thing that's really difficult is that fans also need to understand that we're dealing with people's lives here and we need to make sure that we go through a proper review process so that we give those people the best chance to put their case forward," he said.

"That's Michael and that's the program he's running.

"He has identified some changes he'd like to make but we need to follow some good process but part of that is discussing that with Scott and there will be some announcements in due course but we wanted to make sure we show those people the respect of the process."

 

[I like to watch]

Good to see the Chairman’s new found respect for process.
Our friends in the West will be pleased...

 

[dru]

RH you crack me up.

But I’m finding it difficult to grin.

 

[Quick Hands]

Raelene C has brought new clarity to the respective role definitions of Wallaby HC and the new Director of Rugby. I for one find them compelling and can see how they might usher in an entirely new capability in Wallaby performances whilst reversing 2016-18's somewhat worrying performance trend (my emphasis below, extracted today from www.rugby.com.au):

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Cheika leading everything, ah it takes me back to Totality Tony Magann.

 

[Finsbury Girl]

I'm open minded, I'm very keen on who the 3rd selector will be. I must admit I have my doubts about whether or not Cheika can work with a player over whom has been overruled. I hope the panel are brave enough to make the changes needed.