I think the running of Rugby Australia has improved markedly since she took over.
The process by which Dave Rennie was appointed by coach and the assistants gathered was excellent. Easily the best coaching team we have had assembled for the Wallabies in recent memory.
I think the Folau issue was dealt with as best as it possibly could be. He had to go.
The pathways program is paying big dividends and our Junior Wallabies made the final of the Under 20 World Championships last year. Our best result for a long time.
No one thinks everything is going smoothly in Australian rugby nor that the game doesn't face huge issues regarding its ongoing popularity here. I am unsure how punting Castle will improve that. In my opinion as someone who has followed the game very closely for a long time now, she is doing a good job as CEO.
To me the essential and I think objective problem in assessing R Castle's CEO calibre for rugby's interests is that she inherited such a appallingly leaking bath tub that so much of her effort has had to go into merely trying to plug holes and pour more water in the top to stop the base level from sinking further downwards.
So it's hard to know how good her forward-going work is as the past is still smearing the present with its detritus.
Re the Rennie choosing process, again the assessment problem (of him, and of Castle's choice of him) will be in the fact that Aust is not producing and has not for some time produced an adequate quantity of highly skilled players of the type likely to provide a Wallabies team ready to break the lacklustre mould of recent years, and that is not Castle's fault. On top of that we have the gradual leakage of genuinely good players to Japan and Europe, again not Castle's fault.
The mediocre standard of most of our Super teams equally reflects years of structural and strategic complacency and institutionalised incompetence in terms of building the code's core strengths in, eg, coaching capabilities in depth and, related, player skills development.