Two words: Richard Graham.
Let me add some more just quickly and randomly recalled equivalents to that above so galumay can consider this matter a bit further:
- multiple posters here argued before the BIL series started that JO'C would prove unworthy and loss-contributing as a 10 in the BIL 2013 series
- despite endless ARU PR emissions, multiple posters here in early 2011 predicted rightly that re-signing Deans prematurely in April 2011 would prove a huge mistake, that he'd do poorly as HC at RWC 2011 and not improve the Wallabies thereafter
- posters here predicted re RWC 2011 that QC (Quade Cooper) would seriously under-perform at RWC 2011 and potentially damage the Wallabies chances especially within Deans-type game plans
- posters here predicted after just 1-2 Wallaby matches in 2012 that Blades would prove poor a Wallaby set-piece coach and that he'd need replacing
- posters here predicted that KB (Kurtley Beale) would never prove a good-enough 10 at Super and national levels (despite his great attributes in other positions)
- some exceptionally good analysis of the Tahs here in the Hickey and Foley HC years predicted (early on) that persistence with these types of HC at the Tahs would (a) destroy the Tahs then fan base (b) decimate the Tahs RU's economic situation and (c) lead to worsening losses and unconvincing wins....and so it proved
- posters here predicted (very early on) that Graham would never improve the Force in 2011 (on the contrary, that he'd worsen them) and that when Foley was appointed there and before he coached a game in Perth that he'd take the Force nowhere and that these ill-judged calls by WARugby's 'professional management' would send that RU into chronic fan failure and virtual bankruptcy (as has happened)
- early on, posters here predicted the Rebels would end up costing the ARU a vast sum of $s to keep them alive, all this when the ARU was assuring the public that the early private equity model would limit the ARU's exposure to only moderate sums
- many posters here have consistently argued that too little ARU investment was being placed into areas of building or re-building crucial systemic rugby skills at elite levels such as kicking (hand and place), scrummaging, catch, pass, offloading etc (have a look at how we're going v NZ teams in the 2016 Super rounds to see if this observation has correctness or not)
- posters here predicted (on considered arguments, not just patriotic mush) that Cheika could and would take the Wallabies to the Final of the RWC 2015 whilst most of the mainline Australian rugby media thought we'd surely fall behind England, SA, possibly Wales, ABs.
I would argue that GAGR (and parts of The Roar) have been for years now by far the best repositories for quality assessments of the real state of Australian rugby coaches/-ing and Australian rugby's 'professional management'.
(Mind you, the 'professional management' of Australian rugby has given us so many rich targets that critiquing same has become more or less like shooting fish in a barrel.)
