Don’t worry. We have a handy young hooker and some wonderful backrowers too. Exciting halves as well.
And a bunch of players in the 20s although supposedly none of them deserve to be there.
Reds v Highlanders
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Don’t worry. We have a handy young hooker and some wonderful backrowers too. Exciting halves as well.
And a bunch of players in the 20s although supposedly none of them deserve to be there.
Up the Guts
Steve Williams (59)
I thought after I posted well actually BPA and ASY (Angus Scott-Young) are pretty handy and Timu is going to be a Wallaby. Guess the absolute standouts with Wallaby potential this year are all in positions we have depth in while it'll take a little more time for some of the backrowers coming through.
TSR
Andrew Slack (58)
Personally I don’t feel like the QRU has conned me. I deal virtually every day with the inadequacy of rugby administration and the issues that that raises. I am not shy with my opinions, I believe very much in calling out the issues, and I am quite willing to raise issues direct to the source. And I have had a few wins on things - even though I am essentially a nobody in rugby admin terms.
However, I do feel that rugby is getting more than enough bad press. I know when I speak to people about giving rugby a try, juniors about choosing rugby over other sports, journos who we seek press cover from and sponsors about investing etc that the constant flow of criticism, cynacism or ridicule doesn’t help. A lot of this comes from within.
I agree with a lot of your views - and the ARU/QRU needs to be called out. But I don’t really get why you seem to take issue with those of us who choose to try and be positive. It doesn’t mean our heads are in the sand. I just don’t believe that me expressing my frustrations on here constantly will achieve anything.
With regards to Thorn I see a coach trying to build cultural change in an organisation which has long been stymied by a shit house reluctance to challenge its own culture. A better coaching roster might achieve greater things in the short term, but if they didn’t challenge the systemic issues and the culture, then success, if any, would be fleeting. Link is possibly the best coach we had, and yet even he couldn’t affect the changes that most needed to be made.
I don’t agree with everything Thorn does, and I am still undecided as to whether he will be successful, but I do see improvement and I couldn’t say that during the reign of Graham or Stiles. If he is willing to stay the course maybe, just maybe, we will one day wake up and have an organisation in which discipline, standards and accountability will be ingrained. And results will follow and will be sustained.
If not - well honestly we were pretty much fucked anyway.
wamberal
Phil Kearns (64)
Far too many critics here, not enough people who can actually see when good things happen.
RedsHappy
Tony Shaw (54)
One by one in response (my numbering inserted above):
1. Maybe, but the overwhelming majority of what has gone wrong with the code in QLD and nationally comes from systemic managerial failure, incompetence, unjustified arrogance and self-satisfied insularity in the ARU and State RUs. The chronic failure of the elites.
This has inevitably resulted in gradually deteriorating w-l % results and rugby skills performance on-field that have driven fans away in droves and increasingly tainted the game as having lost its way.
The notion that media and internal criticism are some ' important part of rugby's problem' is entirely mythical and largely generated by those who cannot forge an accurate critique of the code's real problems at root, or, like some here, are just wilfully blind and almost genetically biassed to support and revere the upper level status quo no matter what it does.
Enhanced, sustained performances by the Wallabies and our Super teams would transform the rugby opinions landscape in a newly positive direction just as happened (a) overall re rugby in the late 1990's/early 2000s and, as one example, (b) in the Reds' lone golden period in 2010-12.
It's about results and a return to managerial excellence from above, not a lot of sideline fluff re 'internally generated negativity'.
2. I didn't 'take issue' in that way as you infer, respectfully, you've been too touchy in this. My obvious point (which I stand by 100%) was regarding the ever declining expectations of real rugby excellence in this ever-declining number of Reds posters here and a tendency to bias what in my view are tangential positives in isolation vs observing a very poor totality that consistently results in losses of a type not manifestly better than (say) many of 2016 or 2017's ones, and, later, a bunch of pathetic excuses like 'young and developing team' as though that 'problem of youth' was forced upon Thorn and the QRU vs one of being their clear choice, whatever the resulting consequences.
Over and over again in the 2014-2017 period on these Reds' boards I have had to deal with attacks (often very personal) re many of my posts being 'negative' vs typical refrains like 'good things are happening at the Reds', 'give Stiles, a good coach, a chance', 'R Graham is trying his best and it's a QC (Quade Cooper) 'culture' problem', there's been just just dozens of them like this. And certain mods here who tried to stir up further shit against me and stigmatise my Reds posts as they wanted to subjectively bias the tone here re the Reds/QRU organisation for their own purposes and ludicrously pretend things were so much better out of Ballymore than in truth they were.
But that emperor had/has no clothes, you can't fight facts over time.
Despite the above ferocities of keyboards every year, and I take absolutely no joy in this, my predictions as to what would result from the awful coaching and equally awful culture and low competency within the QRU have been proven wholly correct, predictively and otherwise.
Ironically I chose the name here, RedsHappy, in 2010 as I was genuinely thrilled at the quality that I saw then that Link was bringing to the Reds and the overall calibre of their rugby, selections, skills development, and of course the whole coaching group (which once it broke up from 2012, things were never to be the same for the Reds). It was exceptional to see, the rugby lover in me luxuriated in it all, and I was convinced they could win the Super comp in the next few years. I routinely laid down praise and positive excitement in that time here on these boards.
3. The problem with the Reds since Link left has been/is today: 10% culture/90% inadequate player development, poor selections and external recruitment, and poor general and technical/specialist coaching in depth.
The whole 'B Thorn is a crucial culture-saver and that is sooooo critical to just everything' is a wildly overly comforting myth that, btw, again suits the QRU escapist and blame-shifting narratives as the Reds' 2018 worst-ever small-to-tiny crowds look on in disappointment and slowly decline to ever come again. They could give two fucks about 'culture'.
4. There were 'improvements' under RG and NS. It's just that they were entirely fleeting and unsustained and things fell back to mediocrity quickly. It's a myth that there were zero Reds improvements Round to Round in the 2013-17 period.
5. You can have all the 'discipline, standards and accountability' you want, but if the player selection per position, player development in skills terms over time, and raw technical coaching is not adequate, in pro rugby you will always, always fail and deliver poor w-l %s and slowly take your team and organisation into, best case, a tiny little niche corner with a minute fan base or, worst case, financial bankruptcy.
RedsHappy
Tony Shaw (54)
Why not? I try to pay my good critics the respect they deserve even when trenchantly disagreeing.
Zero_Cool
Arch Winning (36)
Not commenting on the other things but according to the financial report last year or something apparently, like 40% of Australian Super Rugby players are some way directly associated with the QRU. Moreover just look at the U20's sides and how many Queenslanders are in those sides. Maybe we are selecting the wrong players at the Reds level but I look around the current squad and sure there have been some suboptimal choices but noting glaring heinous.
TSR
Andrew Slack (58)
RH - one by one, in the same manner -
1. It is not entirely mythical that both the consistency and the extent of negativity is hampering the code. That's not to say it is the only problem, or indeed the most significant one - but the negativity won't help secure one sponsor, recruit a single extra person to the code or bring anyone through the turnstiles. One of the few growth areas is in Women's rugby where, across the board, the rugby community talks positively and promotes what is great about women's rugby. Same goes for rugby in Western Australia where the didn't have a successful team, but they promoted the game positively and got people to invest emotionally. BTW, why do you assume that the fact I don't vent my spleen on here with regards to the issues in Australian rugby I must be unable to 'forge an accurate critique of the code's real problems at root, or, like some here, are just wilfully blind and almost genetically biased to support and revere the upper level status quo no matter what it does'.
2. I disagree I am being too touchy. I don't have any problem with you expressing your views - many of which I agree with. I just don't understand why you, and others on here, often appear to feel the need to jump on positive comments and bring them 'back to Earth'. I am sorry if you feel you were marginalised or shit canned - but it certainly wasn't from me. All I have done is questioned why you feel the need to stamp on positivity. This is a rugby blog. I come on here to talk about something that I love. I spend enough time dealing with issues - both rugby and elsewhere. At the end of the day, I don't begrudge your right to vent - just don't be so presumptious to assume that when someone chooses to look for the ray of sunshine they must be too stupid to see the storm clouds and I need you to give me a dose of reality.
3. You honestly don't think we've had a culture problem. We've had backs that wouldn't chase kicks, forwards that won't keep in shape, numerous players who won't stay off the piss and whole teams who couldn't be fucked trying to maintain any semblance of discipline. You say it's 10/90 - I think you understate the importance of culture in generating the right conditions for player development. And you know what else - culture is what makes senior players stay back after games and sign autographs, rather than specifically 'opt out' because they are a senior player and that's beneath them. Culture gets players to go out to clubs and spend time building the game in the community. Culture is what tells a Senior Rugby Player that when a group of juniors are training at the other end of the field, they should go down the end and talk to them, not send a coach down to tell them that the players are not to be approached. Culture is what tells support staff that they should seek out and actively engage young potential recruits, rather than go to junior rugby carnivals and spend every spare second looking at their fucking phones. Speak for yourself - I give two fucks about culture and I know lots of others do too.
4. From your comment I think we can agree that there was not much meaningful, sustained improvement
5. Yeah fine - but it works both ways. Look at how many extremely talented teams 'on paper' achieve nothing of note.
RedsHappy
Tony Shaw (54)
Thanks TSR for a full reply:
1. I sincerely think you mistake 'negativity' (as an implied, vaguely pejorative term in this context) and legitimate critique when made. Or, by casting legitimate critique as always 'negativity', there is a tone of 'something intrinsically quite bad' about 'negativity'. That's not at all necessarily so - 'negativity' over time can be an essential component of articulating and organising a sound cause for radical change and often is.
Many of the world's most deserved - and ultimately found as correct - protest movements were absolutely founded in part re intensely articulated 'negativity' toward the conduct of a ruling elite or predominant ideology.
Re the last sentence of your reply above in 1. I did not say that about you at all - but I do think that of some here, justifiably in my view as a number here have, over the years, supported and found truly incredible rationalisations for the most unforgivable negligent acts or omissions by Australia's band of elite rugby administrators.
3. You misunderstand my point. My point is not that 'culture' is not important in the Reds, but _sound that culture will only come from sound core rugby management fundamentals (of the type I noted in terms of quality coaching, selection, player devt etc) in the first and most compelling instance and NOT the other way around_. The right rugby team culture will _never_ arise without those fundamentals being in place.
Relatedly I believe that many of the problems you note arose directly or indirectly from very poor leadership and the lack of real coaching calibre qualifications for the job from Richard Graham over the whole period he was with the Reds, starting from 2013 onwards. The deterioration of culture commenced as the right rugby leadership qualifications were not in place over a long period. This was grievously exacerbated by the board of the QRU as it became clear to the players (and they hated it) that Graham was the indulged, irremovable 'teacher's pet' of the then Chairman of the QRU who - outrageously and irresponsibly - would often let it known that he 'blamed the players and not the HC' as at fault as a group for most of the Reds' performance problems under Graham. This whole context was deeply demotivating for many then Reds players and I know that first hand as fact.
5. Yes, the best recent Australian case being the Tahs under Hickey and Foley or the 2013-14 Reds under Graham. But there again, the problem lay with these coaches and their poor real levels of competence in their core job and the derived lack of good guidance and leadership they provided of a type that the players could (or more relevantly, could not) look up to.
Gradually skills, motivation, attitudes and individual player growth ceased under these leaders as they were simply the wrong leaders.
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