What is wrong with the Tahs

[Gnostic]

Wallabies star Drew Mitchell leapt to the defence of besieged NSW coach Michael Foley on Friday and said Waratahs administrators would be ill-informed if they were looking for a new man to lead the Super Rugby side.
Mitchell said he’d be “disappointed” if Foley was sacked in reaction to a dismal season, which has NSW staring down the barrel of the club’s worst-ever losing streak (six) if they fall to the Hurricanes at Allianz Stadium on Saturday night.
Publicly, Waratahs officials continue to back Foley, but speculation suggests his job isn’t guaranteed with Michael Cheika one high-profile coach linked with the franchise.
Injured captain Rocky Elsom and his replacement Benn Robinson have already voiced their support for Foley, and Test winger Mitchell gave a passionate endorsement for the coach at the Waratahs’ captain’s run on Friday.
“I think it’s absolute rubbish … sure it’s been trying this year and I’m not too sure who exactly has been questioning it (Foley’s position) but I think the fact that they are questioning it means that they’re pretty ill-informed and aren’t really too connected to the group,” said Mitchell.
“If you’re here and amongst the group you’d know that Foles is the best man for the job and it’d be pretty disappointing for anyone pretty close to this organisation to suggest otherwise. (1.)
“We’re a tight group and we understand we’re all in this together … and it’d be a real shame if we couldn’t get out of it as a group.”(2)
Foley says he doesn’t resent being put under the spotlight but emphasised the importance of not worrying about his own personal predicament.
“I think that’s part of the job and I think if you didn’t accept that you wouldn’t take the job,” said Foley.
“There’s times where teams go through difficult times and I think the worst thing a coach can do in those situations is think about himself.”
Despite their 4-9 record, Foley says the Waratahs have been upbeat at training as they look to produce a strong showing before the Test break.
The coach said players had avoided the trap of turning on each other, and hopes the carrot of Wallabies selection will provide a boost for a host of players who are in the national train-on squad, with the Test team to face Scotland on Tuesday to be named on Sunday morning.
“Any time you get picked for your country it’s very exciting … I don’t think it’s distracting,” said Foley, who wants a strong defensive effort on Saturday night to shut down the expansive Hurricanes, who smashed Melbourne last week and still have a sniff of the playoffs.
Meanwhile, Mitchell said he feels as good as can be expected after his long-awaited return from a serious ankle injury in last week’s loss to the Cheetahs, and is hopeful of being back in the Test picture by the Rugby Championship.
“Yeah I don’t see why not. By that point I would have had a fair bit of game time under my belt,” said Mitchell.
“We’ve already seen Quade (Cooper) has been picked without too much time under his belt so it’s not like they (Wallabies selectors) would rule you out because of that.”

1. I would suggest Drew that you are too close to the problem to see it clearly.
2. You may well get your wish. That is leaving together.

 

[It is what it is]

Just watched the press conference post Hurricanes match. Pretty much the same stuff trotted out during the previous loss...learnings, focus, disappointment etc etc.

No need for post match interviews with Foley.
Just change the date and opposition on last week's match, and the one before, and t.....
Reminds me a little of Steve Martin in LA Story where he played a TV weather man who pre-recorded his forecast and went away for the weekend.
Rugby scribes should get on to this and not even bother going to the Waratah's games.

 

[RedsHappy]

1. I would suggest Drew that you are too close to the problem to see it clearly.
2. You may well get your wish. That is leaving together.

Drew M is getting in plenty of practice with this sort of PR support. Mid-2011pre RWC he wrote - or was interviewed and stated - a gushing piece elaborating on the fine qualities Rocky was displaying as Wallaby captain, and what a great job he was doing with the players, the right communications, etc.

 

[Bardon]

There's a lot wrong with that Tahs and I've posted about most of it before. But one of the main things wrong with them is a lack of leadership through the organisation:

No leadership from the board:

They've shown no indication that they are willing to make the necessary changes not only to get the team winning again but to put structures in place so that the boom and bust of past years isn't repeated. Any team can come across a crop of exceptional players and a decent coach and make the finals, some do it by luck and others by planning. The great clubs in the world plan correctly to give themselves the best chance of finding that winning combination.

The Tahs board seem happy to do anything they can to make it look like they're doing something to listen to fans and change things as long as they don't actually have to take action. If they do remove Foley it won't be because they see it as the right thing to do, it will be because they see themselves in a position of either the coach goes or the board does.

No Leadership from Coaches:

First off I'm not going to dump on Foley as a coach. I think he's a very good forwards coach and he is passionate about the Tahs. But his job title isn't forwards coach. The fact that's he's put his had up and said he'd be willing to be demoted shows he's a man of integrity. However it also points to the fact that he maybe has realised that coaching is where his heart lies rather than leading the team and dealing with all the other stuff that goes with it.

No Leadership from Players:

I'm sorry but having a leadership group of 8 players is a joke. The phases "too many chiefs and not enough indians" comes to mind. Then on top of that picking a captain from outside this group and one who hasn't been on the field all season just made things even worse. A club needs 1 captain and a vice captain. Then other senior players are exactly that senior players. Guys who shouldn't need to be told they're in some special group in order to front up for their team. Give the Tahs a workhorse of a captain who is loyal and has a good injury profile and there will be no need for a leadership group.

I don't have the answer to all the Tahs problems but my main suggestion would be to deal with the rugby side and non-rugby side separately.

For the Rugby side bring in a director of Rugby above Foley, not a new head coach. Then give whoever it is the power to revamp anything he sees fit from a rugby point of view. So players, coaches, S&C etc. Free up Foley to do what he's best at, coaching. Let the new guy deal with contracts, tactics. the media. Because of the role the person hired should have a track record of doing similar things at other clubs.

For the board there should be an independent review of their performance and then recommendations around a new board structure. This kind of thing can turn nasty with the board members who know they're for the chop doing everything they can to stay including trying to get rid of the head of the review. But the good thing about it would be that as it's separate from the appointment of the director of rugby it might keep them busy enough that they don't interfere with rugby matters.

 

[Gnostic]

Agree with all that Bardon.

The situation is best shown by the Captainship debacle. The players do not select a Captain that is the province of the coach. The board approve the appointment. You forgot to mention that Hangers was the match captain for a while and wasn't even part of the "leadership group".

Contrast with how the Brmbies have done it. Mowen was new to the club, he was appointed over senior member and Wallabies. Mowen was not then even a Wallaby squad member and I doubt he will get capped (because Deans will not select on form). Most Brumbies fans at the start of the year would have said Moore, To'omua or somebody similar would get the Captaincy. No Mowen was chosen for his leadership qualities, not allegiences.

In my experience reviews of the sort you propose do not work because those in the position being reviewed impede or sway the review. The only way forward is for all position to be declared vacant. Those who wish to contest the positions can reapply, if they are good enough and can demonstrate some results they may well be re-employed. If not they do not have any chance to sway or impede a review.

 

[rugbysmartarse]

From my perspective, I would be interested to find out what the Tahs marketing strategy is.

The success of the targeted marketing campaign has been the one success this year. The whole marketing strategy of the waratahs is to attract corporate sponsorship. This waste first item on the 10:3:1 plan. And they apparently have achieved it, so kudos there in bringing in the denari for next year.

What this shows about the boards view of the team or the game or indeed the rest of the fans I will leave to your collective imagination

 

[Bardon]

The best way to attract interest from corporations is to be successful. Big corporations love to be associated with successful sports teams and would be falling over each other to be sponsors if that Tahs consistently had a winning team. The same is true of corporate boxes it's much easier to fill them if the team is successful and seen as worthy venue for wining and dining corporate clients and overseas colleagues.

 

[rugbysmartarse]

True, but the big corporate heavies don't really care about sport, not the way we do. They often went to private schools, and associate league with low brow, idiotic as this view actually is. But money needs to be spent on corporate entertainment and so it goes either to the tahs or the swans, and since mostly they played rugby the tahs get a large slice

 

[Badger]

The success of the targeted marketing campaign has been the one success this year. The whole marketing strategy of the waratahs is to attract corporate sponsorship. This waste first item on the 10:3:1 plan. And they apparently have achieved it, so kudos there in bringing in the denari for next year.

What this shows about the boards view of the team or the game or indeed the rest of the fans I will leave to your collective imagination

Aha! They did have a strategy. I just wasn't looking in the right place. Hope the Tahs and their sponsors enjoy seeing the team play in front of ever declining crowds. They will need the corporate $$$ next year as there will be only seven home games and the Crusaders won't be visiting to boost ticket sales. Even afternoon games may not save them with the growing disillusionment with team Tahs.

 

[Richo]

Yes. I think you may find that if what you want is genuinely and consistently achieved for at least 2 sequential seasons, the Tahs will soon enough win an S15. Without having to try too hard.

I don't think any team will a Super title without trying too hard, but there are ways to put your team in permanent contention. Or close to it.

 

[Richo]

By the way, I don't get the bagging of Drew Mitchell for his comments. He's a good spokesman and a loyal team mate. What is he gonna do? Throw the coach under the bus?

 

[fatprop]

1. I would suggest Drew that you are too close to the problem to see it clearly.
2. You may well get your wish. That is leaving together.

I would prefer to see players supporting the coach than white anting the guy

 

[brokendown]

the best way to support the coach is to start winning

 

[Gnostic]

By Spiro Zavos from another board....

Towards the end of the woeful Waratahs’ 33-12 thrashing by the young, enthusiastic Hurricanes side, the excellent Fox Sports game caller Greg Clark paused from his commentary.
He asked fellow commentators Phil Kearns and Rod Kafer what the Waratahs franchise needed to do now.
Clark prefaced his question by explaining that both of them had done unpaid advisory work for the Waratahs.
The context was the fact that on a slippery, muddy field and with rain falling often during the match the Hurricanes had scored four tries, the last of them from a short lineout set move on the Waratahs’ try line right on time.
The Waratahs had once again this season lost the second half, this time by 20-3.
A crowd of 13,347 watched the home team show no enthusiasm for hard-shouldered play, with the forwards reverting many times to the pick-and-drive (dive?) option.
This was the Waratahs’ smallest ever home crowd.
The backline with four past and current (as from next Tuesday) Wallabies in it (Berrick Barnes, Adam Ashley-Cooper, Rob Horne and Drew Mitchell) hardly threatened the defensive wall of the Hurricanes, which has been leaky many times this season.
The loss was the 10th for the Waratahs this season and sixth in a row. And there will undoubtedly be more when the Super Rugby tournament returns after the June Tests.
And what was the reply from Kearns and Kafer?
I couldn’t understand the points, if any, that Kearns tried to make.
Kafer, who has one of the shrewdest rugby brains in Australian rugby and is a terrific commentator on rugby, gave an answer about how changing coaches hadn’t worked in the case of the Waratahs with Ewen McKenzie. I took from this that the Waratahs franchise should be wary about sacking head coach Michael Foley.
Whatever we were meant to read into the somewhat cryptic comments by the two former Wallabies, neither of them expressed what is becoming a consensus within the Australian rugby community.
The Waratahs franchise needs a clean-out, root and branch, starting with the board and purging on through the support, medical and training staff, the coaching staff and a number of senior players.
What I found more troubling than what Kearns and Kafer had to say is that they are actually on the Waratahs’ Rugby Advisory Committee. This seems to be a formal part of the Waratahs franchise.
The Sunday Telegraph ‘revealed’ that they have had three meetings of ‘frank and open assessment sessions’ in the last six months on what is happening with the Waratahs.
Troubling? Because as broadcasters they should really disclose the appointment (even though it is unpaid) when they talk about the Waratahs on the Rugby Club and on the excellent Fox Sports rugby broadcasts.
For an ancient journalist like myself, there is an obvious conflict of interest of any broadcaster who has a sort of official connection with an organisation involved in running a franchise that he comments about.
In the same Telegraph article (which was written by James Hooper) the Waratahs chairman Ed Zemancheff ‘broke a four-month silence’ to assure supporters that the entire organisation would come under review as ‘clarity’ is sought on another season ‘punctuated by bitter disappointment.’
I believe that this review will be self-serving.
What really needs to happen is that the board that runs Waratahs Rugby P/L (which for practical purposes behaves like a self-perpetuating oligarchy) needs to dissolve itself and return the running of the Waratahs to the NSWRU board which is chaired by Nick Farr-Jones and has Tim Gavin as President.
The NSWRU gave Waratahs Rugby P/L a licence to run the Waratahs as a separate organisation. This licence needs to be revoked and the sort of clean-out the Queensland Reds did a couple of years ago should now be applied to the Waratahs.
Waratahs Rugby P/L has clearly failed NSW rugby and Australian rugby.
The Waratahs have become a joke as a rugby team. We are talking about one of the greatest provincial sides in world rugby here.
Even worse, there is culture of entitlement within the Waratahs franchise that starts with the board (who seldom engage with the media, on or off the record) and with coaches (why wasn’t there a contest when Michael Foley was appointed?) and players (who was responsible for paying a large amount of money to bring back Rocky Elsom?).
The impact of the poor coaching and the entitlement environment at the Waratahs can be seen in the disastrous performances of senior players. Wycliff Palu, Tatafu Polata-Nau and Benn Robinson have been left out of the Wallabies side to play Scotland. Admittedly, the three-day turn-around has something to do with this. But it will be interesting to see if any of them – or all of them – make the squad to play Wales next Saturday.
Dave Dennis is one Waratah who starts on Tuesday night for the Wallabies. It is interesting to note that if the entitled Elsom hadn’t been injured for most of this season, Dennis, one of the few Waratahs to have played splendidly all season, wouldn’t be where he is now.
Similarly, Sitaleki Timani had to wait his time while the entitled Dean Mumm held down the second row position, until he was injured.
Berrick Barnes is the last flyhalf standing. But his flighty play will have to improve (as it might in the well-coached Wallabies environment) if he is to stay in the Wallabies squad.
The sad fact about the Waratahs in the last few years is that the state that provides a third of all the rugby union players in Australia has not produced a potential champion since Kurtley Beale. And it is history now that Beale has gone to Melbourne, for the money admittedly but also for the chance to play some running rugby.
The case of Adam Ashley-Cooper is indicative of the problems the lacklustre Waratahs system is creating for Robbie Deans. As an inevitable Wallaby who can fill any position from inside centre to fullback, Ashley-Cooper was always somewhere in the starting backline.
But at a time when two of the X-factor players are out (Quade Cooper and James O’Connor) it is an indictment on the Waratahs system that Ashley-Cooper is now only a reserve for the Wallabies on Tuesday.

I find it disturbing that Kearns and Kafer have a position advising the Tahs and then commentate on them. I have the expressed the same issues regarding Eales and Horan. I of course agreed with much of what Spiro says until he starts talking about the individual players where he shoot his arguments down. I think most know that I do not repsect Deans as a coach of the Wallabies to any degree, but even I can see that 1st choice players like Robinson were never going to play against Scotland and players like TPN must be cotton wooled for preservation as he is unlikely to play a full season in any event. In an article like this Spiro would have been better served by leaving out the names and his speculations as so many holes can be poked in his reasoning on each case, thereby weakening what are strong propositions in the first paragraphs.

 

[Richo]

The excellent game caller Greg Clark? What is Spiro smoking?

 

[Bruce Ross]

That rambling series of words reproduced above was reputedly written by a professional journalist.
.

 

[Athilnaur]

That rambling series of words reproduced above was reputedly written by a professional journalist.
.

I fear you are holding Spiro to journalistic standards forever gone Bruce.

Ath.

 

[liquor box]

That rambling series of words reproduced above was reputedly written by a professional journalist.
.

the 10% that was not crap is quite alarming though. There are some very big issues to be sorted out.

 

[The Big Code]

I am only coming in late to this, but I have read through most of the posts. I thought what the guys on the Podslam said last week was very astute. The whole Tahs organisation needs a clean out, but because they have never had a really horrible season like the Brumbies last year or the Reds a few years back, they have been able to talk themselves into thinking that they are about to turn a corner. Maybe this season will be the catalyst for change.

If the Reds hadn't of finished dead last and lost Barnes, there wouldn't have been the cleanout at Ballymore that saw the McKenzie/Carmichael combination come in that has done so much to turn the Reds organisation around. The same thing needs to happen at the Tahs, save for maybe Foley who deserves to keep his job in a new set up.

When McKenzie was chosen as coach of the Reds I saw him speak at a rugby function, where he said that in professional sport there is such a small difference between winning and losing. And once you start winning, all the backroom problems will sort themselves out and people will come to the games and all those other issues will fall into place. Simplistic sure, and easier said than done, but he has been proved correct.

So the Tahs need to start focusing on performing on the field, and all the backroom and boardroom changes need to be made with on field performance as the sole focus. It has been plain to anyone watching Super Rugby this year that the Waratahs have played ordinary rugby at critical times and have lacked the confidence to turn pressure into points. Certain players who have been around for a long time need to be shown the door and the next generation needs to be embraced. All the Tahs fans will hate it but embrace what the Reds did and what the Brumbies are doing and it will be good for NSW and Australian rugby.

 

[liquor box]

By Spiro Zavos from another board....

quote]
he has got no better!

Columnist
By Spiro Zavos,

Peter Higginbotham has played the same way for the Reds, especially in their victory over the Chiefs at Brisbane.
.