In my opinon, JON's second stint has been an abject failure. As I see it, there should have been two focus areas of attention during this stint....and neither of them has anything to do with the Wallabies.
1- growth of the game (i.e. increase in participation numbers, consolidation of existing rugby competitions, increase in support to junior clubs, unification of club and school junior comps, increase in coach participation and qualifications).
2- reintroduction of 3rd tier comp. This needs to seriously happen to facilitate the accelerated (or otherwise) development of the semi-professional player.
Unfortunately, JON has none of these subjects high in any priority list. His management philosophy appears to be that the development of Australian rugby starts and ends with the Wallaby squad. Thus compounding the issue that rugby has NEVER taken itself to the people and it still remains a closed shop for the old boys of GPS schools.
One question I would like to ask, a few years ago, the ARU took over the community rugby section of nswru in order to improve the quality of development and coach education in the largest populated state. Has that improvement happened?
Talking to the 4 senior premiership clubs in western sydney, only 1 of them actually know what the ARU development officer looks like, and that is because that particular club GM used to work with him........
The ARU under JON has been a major disappointment and has set the game back to 1999 levels.......with the example being the tactics employed in the bronze final.
And JON's successor, will most definitely be Matt Carroll. The man who allegedly sent nswru broke in 1996 because of over committing to player payments when the game went professional........
And so the chaotic staus quo will continue. Perhaps the All Blacks beat the Wallabies in the semi just because it was a team made up of hard core farmers and guys who graduated from the school of hard knocks from South Auckland....instead of the mean streets of Mosman!!!