Blacks and Boks seem a pretty good bet for the RWC final. Right now they are the best two teams.
Eddie Jones really talks a good game and makes some intersting points. I think the South Africans had it right making him an assistant to Jake White, rather than the head coach.
That point Arsene Wenger made about the coach of a national side not being in control of player development is an interesting one. You could assume he has a very defeatist attitude, but I seem to recall that he was highlighting that fact that the area of coaching that interests him most is player development (and it is an area he has had much success with) - which is not a big part of being a national coach. I am pretty sure that if he was asked, Mr Wenger would agree that no matter what the player resources are, some coaches use them better than others (in football - and BTW all that fucking diving and histrionics really shits me - the best example for Australians would probably be Guus Huddink, who managed to get the most out of limited resources in Australia, and before that South Korea).
In the case of Robbie Deans there have been a couple of arguments put forward in his defence. The first is that he is 'building depth' by playing young players - it would appear that Wenger and Jones don't believe Deans is in a position to be building depth as that is, was, and will be the job for others. The other argument is that the depth isn't there, and it is not his fault the depth isn't there. Right now, there are a lot of injuries to players who would be considered 1st (or even 2nd) choice players (maybe even more than is the case normally) - but that only means the current run of form can be explained (interestingly, the June tests have on average been more sucessful than the average over the whole of his time as head coach). Over his whole time as head coach, has he really had to deal with that many more injuries than anyone else? Maybe the most fatalistic argument in support of Deans is 'we are just plain shit - what can he do?' - a little bit like his own statement relating to only being able to use what he has got. Maybe we are seeing why Deans was so successful with the Crusaders (his ability to develop players that play 'his style'), and also his limitations as a national coach (as he isn't in a position to develop players to play 'his style', he isn't sure what to do). As has been said before, there is a step up required for coaches as well as players at the internatinal level, and probably more pertinantly, the skills required of a national coach are not exactly the same as for club or provincial coach (there is no doubt Deans' coaching and player development skills as shown with the Crusaders were of the highest standard).
I think ]Eddie Jones' points about competing with league and AFL for young athletic players are only partly accurate. Neither of those two codes are intersted in the kind of kid who would go on to play in the rugby front row. The same goes for the small zippy guys, or the monster locks. League these days has a generally very narrow range of 'desirable physiques'. AFL is slightly broader, but neither have the broad range of shapes and sizes found in rugby - and the areas where there is overlap between the codes are not really the areas where rugby is struggling.
