BJ and RH, can either of you explain to me why Andy Friend had to be humiliated by being garbage bagged out the door?
If it was to satisfy the senior players they have certainly shown what they could do without him.
If it was to satisfy the assistant coaches let's see how many of them Jake White retains.
If it was a chance for Andrew Fagan to show what an uncompromising, decisive, results-driven CEO he is we now know how well that has worked.
In the modern era people have become accustomed and indifferent to loyal servants of companies and organisations being sacked and escorted from the premises without time to clear out their drawers. In a more enlightened age Friend would have been tapped on the shoulder and told he would not be reappointed in 2012. Did Fagan think he would try to sabotage the joint if he were left in place? Someone seems to have done that after he has gone.
Bruce, for me:
- you may have noticed elsewhere on this subject I noted that Friend should have been let go (with no forward signalling or gossip out of the Brumbies or its RU) either at the end of the 2010 season, or at the very end of this one, period. That would have allowed Friend a 'I'm resigning after achieving XX and am now going on to pastures new, etc...'. That this 'shoulder tapping with dignity' (using your good phrase) did not occur - when it easily could have, even with a JW signing - by Fagan et al is just Symptom No 239 that the ACTRU's governance culture and Board competence as leaders are both highly sub-standard. And by his dumping of Friend mid-term in the manner he did, it was a manifest display of Fagan's weakness in the role, not his decisive strength. I DO endorse the JW signing as noted, but what should have happened in this scenario (when say JW needed a decision now, not in July) was that this was done with suitable discretion (an impossible concept for anything in Brumbie-land), and then permit Friend to positively resign and announce same as above in a decent manner, whilst offering handover and assistance to JW at the end of the 2011 season, and I am sure Friend's natural decency would have responded well to that approach and he could have been relied upon to support the change process, even though personally disappointed by it.
Having said all the above, I suspect Friend is deeply relieved to be done with the ACTRU and its bacteria-infested ways. I further note that no ACTRU Board member nor Fagan has stood and had the decency to take any form of senior leadership responsibility for the serious crisis that has engulfed the Brumbies, a team that, according to its Interim Coach, has absolutely no determination or guts or capacity for hard work, etc. But that's all the players' fault, of course.
[Btw, Symptom No 25 of defects in the whole Tah's culture and governance system was when, following KB (Kurtley Beale)'s announced 2012 departure for MEL, the NSWRU or other parties in Driver (a) clearly leaked to Growden the very next day that 'the Rebels are nothing but oddles of money and it was only that lured KB (Kurtley Beale) down there' (insulting to KB (Kurtley Beale) amongst other things) and, next, (b) 'the Rebels' have a really bad drinking culture'. Then not one single NSWRU officer or Tahs official stood up and took any responsibility of any kind for KB (Kurtley Beale) leaving and/or made no offer to constructively review a single aspect within NSW rugby as to why he might have left, so that the highly costly experience (losing such a long-nurtured young star) could potentially be learnt from.]