I think the Wallaby players, coaches and staff should attend occasions such as the Nudgee Terrace rugby day, perhaps also some home games on Ross or at Churchie or BBC to understand from the bottom up what rugby culture looks like. The Springboks for me have the best and deepest rugby culture followed by Wales and New Zealand, England and countries like Fiji, Argentina, Ireland. We used to have strong culture also peaking when Michael Lynagh and Campo etc were playing. Now it feels very AFLish, vacuous, corporate and shallow. The GPS competition is superb and they could learn a lot from it culturally. Those international teams I mentioned seem to be playing for a higher purpose, particularly the Springboks, and I see something similar, for example, when the Terrace boys walk out against Nudgee, or when Nudgee bows down and prays in front of the admiring grand stand before they run out, or when BBC come down the hill behind the bag pipes. There are so many poor decisions that get made by various rugby organisations in Australia and the one that is really annoying me atm is when I watch any games on the GPS Sport live feed and they only start the coverage after both teams have taken the field. They don’t show any of the build up. Don’t they know anything about GPS rugby and its rituals etc.? Gosh, bad decision after bad decision incl a referee shutting down a superb rugby contest by blowing his whistle whenever an attacking team is on the line of its opposition. Come on Rugby Australia smarten up for god’s sake.
