Robbie Deans

[Sandpit Fan]

Often when people defend deans they use the excuse that he doesn't have the cattle. But if that is true, then Australia has never 'had' the cattle. But we've won 2 world cup's without the cattle and came within a bee's foreskin of winning a third. As such I would argue playing to your strengths is far more important than trying to play a gameplan that is out of reach. And deans failure to understand and utilise the strength of the players he has is what has led to him being the most unsuccessful coach of the wallaby's in the professional era.

Bowside, hitting the agree button doesn't quite do this justice. Just makes sense.

 

[Inside Shoulder]

We have a shitload of talented backs. We had two of the best flankers in the world before one of them went overseas. We have a lock who was just about the best tight forward in super rugby. Our scrum was serviceable (I would have had Kepu at TH and slipper at LH). For a periods in his 4 year reign we had a very good line-out.

I dont think the mid field bombs and competing for the high-ball are necessarily strengths. Yet we seem to do it a lot.

Look around you: our back are no better that NZ's, on any view of it.
I dont think we have a strength relative to the rest of the world at the moment.

 

[Richo]

Bowside, I completely agree with what you've been saying. Very well put, sir.

 

[Langthorne]

Bowside - spot on.

The other Wallaby strength, once upon a time, was to make the most of every strength. So for example whilst I would agree with Inside Shoulder that New Zealand have great backs too (maybe individually better) the Wallabies of old would manage to be better (more often than currently) by being a better unit, being clever, having set moves etc.

 

[Inside Shoulder]

Bowside - spot on.

The other Wallaby strength, once upon a time, was to make the most of every strength. So for example whilst I would agree with Inside Shoulder that New Zealand have great backs too (maybe individually better) the Wallabies of old would manage to be better (more often than currently) by being a better unit, being clever, having set moves etc.

I agree - where has the cleverness gone?

 

[Lindommer]

I was ferretting around my warehouse after receiving a pallet of wine from my Kiwi supplier last week, on cutting the plastic this note fell out:

"Dear Robbie,

Congratulations on reaching your 50th test as coach of the Wallabies. Can I start by saying what a choice job you've been doing since you first started working for the New Zealand Rugby Union in 2008. It's been a long term task, but the plan to ensure the All Blacks win the Rugby World Cup at home in 2011 is coming together perfectly. My idea of getting you to be hired by Australian Rugby as their national coach and then sabotage the Wallabies from within, in my modest opinion, was an absolute masterstroke.

While our plan had many doubters, I always knew in my heart the Aussies would fall for it. After reaching 50 tests as coach on the weekend I think it's only fitting to mention what I think are your top 10 highlights of sabotage to date:

1. Losing to Ireland.
2. Giving Rocky the captaincy of the country he hadn't played in for over two years, then stripping it off him right before the RWC campaign started.
3. Losing to Scotland.
4. Not even getting close to winning the Bledisloe Cup back.
5. Not picking a backup for Pocock in the RWC squad.
6. Never using the Wallaby bench effectively.
7. Not having a backup gameplan.
8. Using words like "contest", "willing", "collision", "contact zone" and "adaptation" to descibe rugby.
9. Losing to Samoa.
10. Winning only 54% of all your games as coach of historically one of the most successful teams in rugby.

I can't believe after all this they then extended your contract for a further two years! How they didn't work out our plan after you coached them to 10 Bledisloe Cup losses in a row is full credit to you and we're all very proud back at home, bro.

Well done once again, and as planned we'll see you at Richie's place after RWC2011 to celebrate pulling the wool over the Aussies' eyes.

Cheers

Graham Henry"

Now we all know Henry's a former schoolteacher, in fact he was headmaster of Kelston BHS, and it does read read like one written by a careful writer (very impressed with GH's correct use of the apostrophe in "Aussies'"), but is it fair dinkum? Or was a mischievous Kiwi having a lend of us?

MMmm?

 

[FANATIC]

The post above was funny the first five times that I read it.

But I have also come on this thread to congratulate Robbie Deans and all of his countrymen on winning the RWC2011.
I would expect that the Darkness deep in Deans I-once-was-an-AllBlack-too heart shines bright tonight.

I feel as much love for Deans right now as the entire UK felt for Henry, also their first imported coach, when Henry took the Lions to controversial losses in 2001.

 

[FANATIC]

I agree - where has the cleverness gone?

It is just gone.
It is also offical, the Wallabies play dumb rugby.

 

[Bowside]

So if I read the article on the front page correctly, and the information contained in it is factually correct, it seems the aru now have an opportunity to get rid of deans without breaching contract.

Grassroots lobbying campaign anyone?

 

[FANATIC]

So if I read the article on the front page correctly, and the information contained in it is factually correct, it seems the aru now have an opportunity to get rid of deans without breaching contract.

Grassroots lobbying campaign anyone?

YES!
People power might work... If we can oust Prime Ministers based on polls surely a Rugby coach shouldn't be too hard.

Someone suggested a Facebook campaign.
I don't use it myself but will sign up to do so for a good reason.

 

[FANATIC]

IT'S TIME....

for an Aussie to coach Australian Rugby Union

 

[RedsHappy]

I posted the 07 squad above. Just which of these players should have been played more? Latham, Smith, Gregan retired. Mortlock got injured. We spent 3+ of the year's saying our backs are fine but our forwards suck. Are we saying Al should have got another year?

Face it, Deans inherited a lemon, he's gone a long way to sorting things, we won the 3N, had a fair year in 2010, and we got bundled out by what is quite probably the best all black team since 1995.

We lost to Ireland due to no Pocock, Moore, Ioane(Mitchell). Would Hodgson really have made any difference?

It's all 20 20 hindsight whinging. Was I happy with our results? No, but to say Deans failed, and that he did so due to short term sacrifices made on the RWC altar is deluded.

The team was shafted, great players retiring, and needed rebuilding. Nor did the whole team get dumped. A large chunk of the squad continued to play.

I have no issues with focusing on annual performance, but the argument is irrelevant to where the team was and needed to go.

At what point has Deans ever said 'this test isn't important, we are trialling players for the World Cup x, years away? '

I know this is a fansite, but all the whinging from Deans haters saying he should be fired... Face it, we could have won and some of you would say we won despite him.

OK, let's go.

1. The 2007 Wallaby team 'lemon'. Aus entered the RWC 2007 IRB-ranked a world #2 as at June 2007. Lemon-like? See IRB site, the data's there. If this post RWC 2007 team was such a shocker of a lemon, how did Deans kick off really quite well in 2008 with a solid win vs the ABs (one of the very few since then) and a tolerable sort of 2008 season, certainly not a disaster. Has the Wallabies' 2011 general standard of play, tactical quality, skills-on-display been demonstrably better than 2008 on objective measures?

2. As many of us have noted elsewhere, claiming a hugely watered down 2011 3N where the 2 main competitors fronted knowingly weakened teams for a much smaller number of games than is usual as some kind of wonderful achievement marker is just a knowing distortion and a limp succumbing to ARU PR ploys. There's no substance in it.

3. 'Fair 2010'. How can a year when we played England 4 times at home (2 midweeks vs As) and once away and we won just one of 5 at the very beginning...and then had one sole dead rubber win vs the ABs.... be termed a 'fair year'. Well, it could be if one's expectations of Wallaby results have sunk very low.

4. Virtually no commentator of substance thinks we solely lost to Ireland due to Pocock's and Moore's etc absence. You know that. There was truckloads additionally wrong with our lack of preparedness, the intensity of our forwards, repetitive wrong body height into tackles, poor kicking, etc. Again, where was the demonstrable improvement over 2007/8 Wallaby playing capability?

None of the people here at GAGR you indirectly refer to are 'Deans haters', they just had objective cause to doubt his coaching skills and management structure and were solely motivated by their loyalty to the Wallaby cause, not some personal rubbishy crusade vs Deans the individual. Go back and read their posts if you need evidence of my contentions.

5.20/20 hindsight. Bullshit it is. Many posters here, e.g. Scarfman, Gnostic, Langthorne, Reddy!, Robson, Juan Cote, etc etc consistently raised major doubts and concerns re Deans' methods, selections et al from late 2009 and throughout 2010, and plenty of it pre RWC.

6. Of course Deans never said 'this Test's not important...'. No one alleged that, you're distorting to win a point, not advancing analysis. But there are many, many instances - growing in number since Deans started to non-achieve from late 2009 - where Deans and the ARU termed Test losses as 'nothing too serious to worry about, we are learning well, and our young squad is developing well towards the RWC...'. The RWC was the touchstone, mentioned over and over again. The wondrous deferred goal of the RWC was regularly implied to be 'the real goal of these young Wallabies'. And just before the Christchurch AB game in 2010, Deans explicitly said (something very like): 'I've really been hired to win the RWC. That's the main objective of what we're doing with the squad'.

 

[FANATIC]

OK, let's go.

None of the people here at GAGR you indirectly refer to are 'Deans haters', they just had objective cause to doubt his coaching skills and management structure and were solely motivated by their loyalty to the Wallaby cause, not some personal rubbishy crusade vs Deans the individual. Go back and read their posts if you need evidence of my contentions.

...clipped...

2010, Deans explicitly said (something very like): 'I've really been hired to win the RWC. That's the main objective of what we're doing with the squad'.

Bloody well put.
I questioned the appointment from the very start as everyone who personally knows me will vouch.
But with not many posts on the board GAGR posters will just have to take that on faith.

I just signed up to NoFacebook in anticipation of a campaign for a better coach hopefully an aussie one please.
Maybe there is a good use for social media after all

 

[linz]

i am becoming increasingly worried by what i see in the press, there is not enough discussion about Deans and the multiple reasons he needs to be booted. i am beginning to fear that people are just going to let this miserable failure blow over, and settle for 3rd. very un australian, and at the end of the day we did not even deserve 3rd. something needs to be done, i never want to see such a poor use of strategy again.
He wants the players to "play whats in front of them" but boots all the senior players, who might be capable of such a stupid approach, off the team.
he coaches them for 4 years as an attacking running team, and then tries to turns them into a boring rugby tennis team during 5 weeks of the WC. and not only that, he sticks to players that cannot play the new style while leaving those that can on the bench. Honestly, i could go on and on and on.
when is he going to be held responsible for this complete and utter mess? people are talking about how he can redeem himself against the lions, he was not hired to beat the lions!!!!! and to those that are saying we were beaten by a fantastic AB team, look at the french last night, this AB team was vulnerable and we handed it to them in a silver platter. if he was a CEO or politician, he would have been booted ages ago, how does he keep getting away with it? the worst thing i have heard him say, which aggravates me no end, was "the wallabies will learn from the semi final" the WC is not an experiment, you don't get a practice world cup, and why is it always the wallabies will learn, how about you deans? will you learn? i doubt it, he seams to be too proud to learn. and finally after the game he stated that the AB s were just too clinical, well whose fault is that Robbie? you sent the wallabies out with the most stupid game plan i have ever seen, when was repeatedly kicking box kicks to a fullback who is probably the best in the world under the high ball, a good idea? just ridicules how much stupidity Deans is responsible for, if he had any decency he would step down. though from what i have seen, he probably thinks he has done nothing wrong and that the team just needs to learn.

 

[FANATIC]

Gee the post above hits the nail on the head.
No, he won't step down, he will have to be pushed.

I just read a really funny piece written on this site about Dingo's 50th bday which signs off saying

"The last package I opened was one from John O’Neil. It was a large document filled with plenty of clauses, confidentiality agreements and legal jargon. It came with a hand written note that signed off with the sentence “WIN OR FUCK OFF”
A truly motivating gift."

http://www.greenandgoldrugby.com/my-50th-robbie-deans/

NOW, if only that could be true, seems to apply to the rest of the coaching world so why not deans?

 

[linz]

"WIN OR FUCK OFF" beautiful words, if only O'Neil backed them up. Have a depressing feeling that O'Neil has given Deans a "pass mark", which just reflects O'Neil's incompetence. it should not be a pass if they get to the semi, but how. should you get a pass mark based on a fluke? and since when has a semi been a pass anyway? no wonder they failed. would not be so angry with the whole situation if i had just seen the wallabies play one good game. one game where they were not crippled by a terrible game plan, player selection, bad use of the bench, and faith in good players who are in shit form. One game where Robbie did not just blame it on the players.

 

[Boomer]

On Mad Rob's selection policies: The Oz has an interesting line from a Bret Harris report about injuries to Vickerman ...

The veteran lock showed great courage to play with the injured shoulder at the World Cup in New Zealand, but was unable to take part in the Wallabies' 21-18 win over Wales in the bronze-medal playoff game.

So Vickerman played through the tournament with a busted shoulder. By the time of the NZ game it must have been touch and go. Yet Mad Rob still wouldn't play Sharpe at all?

The article, by luck or good editing, has a pic of Sharpe biting his nails while Vicks trains.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...oconnor-to-shift/story-e6frg7o6-1226176650044

 

[Inside Shoulder]

Deans was glowing in his comments on Sharpe at the end of the wales game.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Scotty]

I still don't see how sharpe played so well to force selection?

Actually thought that Simmons played very well off the bench vs nz and justified his inclusion.

 

[No4918]

Deans was glowing in his comments on Sharpe at the end of the wales game.

Would be a real dick if he wasn't after he has just played his 100th test. Unfortunately after the injury he wasn't near his best.