From what I can tell SA school rugby is expressive enough. Something happens to get conservative as they start through the academies I guess. SA as enough rugby numbers coming through to be able to cope with the chicken runners - as long as they keep the best oaches who need to be constantly bringing through the new talent. The opportunity for real coaching pathways is there. Springboks can continue to be a world power, even with the exodus to Europe, if they handle it well.
In Aus I dont think we have coaching pathways at all sorted. Nor do we have the numbers. But, believe it or not, we have more commercial opportunity than anyone else in SANZAAR. I'm not saying that opportunity has much in the way of low hanging fruit. But after coaching, our biggest problem is a distant hands off ARU and little effective joined up management to the states and the clubs.
It's culture and mentality. From club level up for the most part rugby is run and coached by establishment types wherever you go.
And everyone's on a power trip. Grey heads who have done things the same for years and so have those before them. It takes an innovator like Ackerman, with the backing of a progressive thinking CEO to break through the stereotype and do something different. A rarity indeed.
Clubs, provinces, and the Bok establishments clearly have not realised their deficiencies, and don't want to. It's a deeply rooted cultural issue of old school, chest beating types and you can teach them nothing. They have all the answers and it's all about keeping their job or the prestige of sitting on another board.
The Bulls and Cheetahs have gone backwards. Their boards and management are more insular and backward in their thinking than before. The idea of leadership equates to how well you protect your turf by keeping your "boys" close at hand. Anybody with different ideas is seen as a threat. Stormers and WP? Not much better. Also bankrupt which doesn't help much.
I suspect the above description is not far off the mark here in Australia.
Just finished reading a book about the evolution of Homo Sapiens and how it has as a species outsmarted everything from the first Neanderthals it encountered. That's how it has stayed ahead.
In rugby terms, the Kiwis are a little bit like that, outsmarting us Saffa and Aussie Neanderthals while we sit and gaze in fascination at our navels, wishing we knew how to make a fire.
