Just thinking about the lack of excellent 10s... I'm not sure if this is right, but it feels like there is an incessant drive at the tahs to unearth the next big thing that seems to undermine player development. School boy geniuses signed as 18 year olds and thrust into the limelight of super rugby, a tough sink or swim against hardened professionals. And alongside this, it seems like the tahs are all too ready to pull the plug on the experiment when it doesn't pay immediate dividends. Obviously there's the problem of competition from league for the best young schoolboys, but even when they go to league these players rarely play first grade in their first couple of seasons. This might be a little of the mark... what do you guys think?
Actually, Steve Larkham is an example of a player who absolutely did not arrive in Super Rugby as a pre-packaged world cup winning fly-half. He played club rugby for Wests in Canberra for a few years, was a part of the Kookaburras and then the Brumbies at fullback (where, apparently, he had an early reputation for not passing the ball to blatant overlaps) and then finally made the transition to fly half not for the Brumbies, but for the Wallabies, when he was already an established super player.
And Cooper, despite being a case of a player thrust into professional rugby at a young age, arguably had the time and space to develop at that level since the reds were bad enough in his early years that his poor performances were just par for the course. Also, Phil Mooney showed remarkable patience and foresight in sticking with him despite his fairly random rugby early on. Do you think Cooper would have been kept on at the tahs? I mean after one of his first games there was a youtube video of his worst mistakes set to the theme music from Benny Hills.
Perhaps a related issue, then, is the demand for immediate results. Think Edmonds, Donnelly, MacKay, Halangahu et al., who were all tried and discarded after a few games each season. While none of these players are Steve Larkham or Quade Cooper, with consistent game time they could have been very good for the tahs, particularly when surrounded by other strong players. I mean the best backline play the tahs have put together over the last few seasons was during the second half of 2009 I think, when Halangahu was at 10 for 8 consecutive games. He played very astute football. He gave them a good mix between field position, direct play, and releasing the star players outside him. But Halangahu has hardly started a game since then, Barnes was always on the way in after he was signed - so Halangahu is always stuck with one off, do or die performances, with no consistent rugby under his belt. Clearly he had a poor game against the Crusaders, but this was his first outing after a major layoff with injury - I think a steadier hand might have taken that into consideration and stuck with him for a bit. Particularly since he is clearly a better ten than Beale....
Anyways, just some initial thoughts. Are there better explanations out there? All the posts so far have addressed the general malaise at the tahs, so I thought I’d get the ball rolling on this angle of the Gnostic’s post.