We hear many calls for RA to improve rugby in Australia and just about as many ways to do it but what lessons might we learn?
What this will, and won’t, cover
This isn’t going to be a list of suggestions to Joe Schmidt, nor a list of players he should pick. Partly that’s because I’m not a coach and partly that’s because he has to deal with the situation as it currently is. But, in a world where I’m suddenly in charge of RA (along with Nutta and a few right thinking individuals), we need a plan to change things quickly as well as in the longer term. This is going to lay out some short term changes, mostly cheap ones, based on looking at the successful sides around the world.
Given that, there there are three main areas this will look at, doing a bit of a compare and contrast exercise.
A wide note about World Rankings
I am not a huge fan of the current rugby World Ranking system. It is slow to react, doesn’t reward incremental improvement – you only gain points when you win, so if you improve from being thrashed by 50 to losing by 5 you are still losing points and potentially places on the ladder – and it is debatable how accurate it is as a ladder.
However, I don’t think many fans would disagree that over the last few years Ireland, South Africa, New Zealand and France have been the best four sides in the world. But we might debate whether that order, which is the order before the Autumn Internationals began, is correct. For all my misgivings, it’s the system we have. Those top four have, for the last four years or more, been the best – that is most consistently victorious sides in the world. If Australia is going to challenge for the top again, they’re the teams to beat.
Selection pool
The Australian Model
In Australia, the selection pool is small. Smaller since the demise of the Rebels – however much financial sense that made, and this is not the place to debate that – and if you assume that only starters for the Super Rugby Pacific (SR) teams are going to be selected as Wallabies. As a Wallabies squad needs three players in each position, selection is basically “who misses out?”
Now, those assumptions are not quite fair as squads rarely take six locks, six centres, nine back three players for example. But they’ll often take three of each front row position and three scrum halves so it’s not entirely unreasonable to oversimplify like this. Likewise, squads with a really powerful scrum might have their starter and their reserve up for selection while teams with a relatively terrible scrum might not have anyone in consideration. But that’s getting into specifics rather than a high level overview. Who exactly will be considered will change from year to year and, while it’s important it’s not part of the plan that RA should consider. They need to consider how to get as many players available to be considered.
Around the world
Depending on where you look you can see functional and dysfunctional models. None are identical to the Australian model.
Similar to Australia
At first glance New Zealand, South Africa and Wales are the closest – they have five (NZ) and four (SA and Wales) top flight teams in their domestic competitions (SR and URC respectively) to draw their players from. But, those first appearances are deceptive.
New Zealand uses the NPC in parallel to their test matches so players are either in the test squad or playing NPC rugby. If we assume three players per position in the test squad and 14 starters in the NPC that gives you, broadly speaking, 17 players competing for 10 starter and first reserve positions in the SR sides. So there’s competition for the SR sides, then competition for the test sides. While this isn’t quite true – not all the NPC players stand a chance of getting into a SR squad, about 50 per year, and nowhere near all of those will start – most All Blacks squads have a few players who have come up this way rather than been marked as a youth and playing age-grade internationals and stepping up to the All Blacks as if of right.
South Africa has both the Currie Cup performing a similar role to the NPC and a looser selection policy that we’ll come back to later.
Wales also has a vibrant club game under the URC provinces and, although it’s less than in NZ there is some player promotion. Although he’s reaching the end of his career, Liam Williams was famously not selected by a province, working as bricklayer and playing amateur rugby, and then spotted and moved back to have a long and distinguished career. It happens to others too. But Wales has a different selection policy to Australia and that helps spread their selection pool.
Bigger than Australia
France are obviously far richer than Australia, with a 14 team league for starters. They have a number of overseas players at each club, but they limit this, both in terms of overseas players per club and in the number that can be in a match day squad. Because of the size of their league, and the European Cup, all clubs will play 26 league games and 4 ERC games each year. The best will play up to three knockout games in each competition too. Their stars still play the most, but their depth is really tested, and it’s not uncommon for fifth and sixth placed players on the depth chart to play from the bench several times a year, third and fourth placed players to start several times a year.
England are likewise bigger than Australia, with 10 team league, and like France, have many overseas players. Unlike France, England have no control over the number of overseas players, except the salary cap.
When they had a 13 team league England struggled in some positions with foreign imports flooding those key positions. With only 10 teams, that has got worse. For example, the English 12 plays at 13 for his club, outside the Scottish second-choice 12. But there are positions where it’s actually hard to find an English qualified player playing. Selection is a nightmare.
Smaller than Australia
But teams like Scotland, Fiji and Argentina, with two, one and zero clubs in the tier under test rugby, manage to play test rugby with a bigger selection of players and are currently above Australia.
The Weird
Ireland officially have four provinces but for the last eight years they have basically selected Leinster plus a few others. However, this isn’t a case of “only Tahs need apply” – Leinster is the most rugby-playing province in Ireland (the other provinces tend to play GAA or soccer). The IRFU has stronger pathways for schools in Leinster but still supports the others, and the best players in other provinces are selected on merit.
Selection Policy
In Australia
We have the Giteau Law. Young players must stay at home until they have reached a certain level of caps, then they can be selected wherever they play.
Around the World
There are three main models in use in other countries.
Strict
France, England and New Zealand definitely use this. I’m not sure about Ireland but they functionally use this because they never select players from outside Ireland.
The national coaches can get to the players easily seems to be the main, general benefit here.
It’s good for New Zealand where the lure of playing for the All Blacks has cachet still, and makes up for the lower pay they can offer, although the stars supplement their salary with big advertising deals.
Loose
At the other end of the spectrum you have Scotland, Argentina and Fiji that allows their players to play anywhere but still chooses them. Officially South Africa is in this category, but in practice it acts more like the hybrid below.
This is great if you have too many players for your infrastructure. Fiji produces rugby players, for the 7s and 15s games but needs financial support to run their sides – Drua, Fijiana, and the test sides. Having players playing abroad and coming back to play for Fiji suits their finances. Scotland can only support two teams in the URC, based in their two big cities, letting their players play anywhere – typically England and France – frees up space and increases their selection pool.
As we saw for Fiji and Scotland, but particularly Fiji, in the first round of the Autumn Internationals, matches outside, or right at the start of test match windows can be tricky because your overseas players may not be available. Both teams were affected, but Scotland A was better than the Fijian Drua playing away from home. They need that stardust more.
Hybrid
Australia is in this category. The other big country in this category is Wales. Like Australia they have a qualifying number of caps, but they have a “no caps” exemption. This is because young players might sign for other clubs, usually in England, and start their careers there, in part because of their parents working in England. If it’s your first professional contract, or a continuation of it, you’re still eligible to play for Wales. Possibly most notably LRZ qualified under this rule. Feyi-Waboso, if he’d decided to play for Wales instead of England would have too.
Looking at where Australia and Wales are in the world rankings, it’s tempting to say this policy is a disaster but Wales have had it in place and reached World Number 1, a RWC semi-final and won several Grand Slams. It’s not the policy directly that’s at fault.
Play the Australian way
While I have deliberately chosen this title to be provocative I do have a serious point.
If you look at the top four national teams: Ireland, South Africa, New Zealand and France I would argue that for two of them, Ireland and New Zealand, if you were to write a short description of how their national teams play you could easily apply that to, in the case of NZ all their SR teams and Ireland certainly to Leinster, which provides the majority of the Irish side.
I would go further than that, and argue that, while not identical, you can do the same for South Africa and France too. That most identifiable part of Bok rugby, the short box kick after three phases might be absent, but big ball carriers, super-aggressive defence and the like is still pretty common. In French rugby, an aficionado might laugh at the idea that UBB and La Rochelle play in the same style, but they both express parts of the French national team’s style.
While some people may scoff at this idea, if a player is doing something similar for club and country, the conversion is minimal. You might well add some extra twiddles, and the game is going to be faster, but you’re adding to what you’re already doing, not doing something new.
If we look at the next group of four: England, Argentina, Scotland and Italy, I would argue that you can’t really, even with a squint, look at the national team and then their teams under that and see broad similarities.
For England that’s because the premiership has a diverse range of play styles and you can find teams that play with the “kick first, last and always” style of England, you can certainly find teams playing the defensive rush style of England, but you can find plenty of other good teams players in other styles.
For Scotland and Argentina it’s more because their players are scattered everywhere and they are melding players from all over Europe, so there’s no coherent style. Italy have a bit of this problem, many of their best players are playing in the Top 14. However, you can make an argument that the recent improvement in Italy’s fortunes is linked to the existence of Benetton and Zebre. They play in a loosely similar style and in a style that is not that different to the Azurri, so perhaps that helps – I’m of the opinion that this is doing more to develop their young players and turn them into solid test quality players, something they’ve historically lacked – but if I were to revisit this in four years I might be writing about how “the Italian style” has helped them develop, and perhaps reach the World Cup quarter finals for the first time.
So, arguably, a “national style” is helping Italy improve, and it’s part, only part but definitely part, of what helps the top four teams reach the top.
If we consign the Cheika abuse of the term to the history books and try to think of the current situation I think it’s still quite hard to say what the Wallabies’ style is. That’s not really a criticism of Schmidt or the players, although it’s going to sound like it. Internally I’m pretty sure they all know what they’re aiming for but they are not, yet, delivering it on the pitch for long enough stretches that it’s really clear. They are improving, overall, we’re starting to see it appear on the pitch at times, but it fails too often to be really clear.
However, if we look at the SR teams it’s hard to imagine a style that you could write for the Wallabies that would let you also have the SR teams play in a similar style, however hard you squint. What I think Schmidt has done well is select players who are already playing in a way that is similar to the way he wants the Wallabies to play and slotted them into a team.
What would my Rugby Australia do?
Increasing the selection pool has a long term solution – both a fifth SR team and an Australian NPC – and while I think they’re both excellent ideas they both take time and money to develop. If there’s money RA should start, straight away, but show me the money first.
In the short, and cheap, term dropping the Giteau Law, or at least heavily amending it could be a big help. Anecdotally, as I understand it, future stars are anointed early, wrapped in cotton wool and that’s it. Anyone else either settles for amateur rugby or goes abroad, and is lost to the selection pool. While the high profile cases I know of, Tuipulotu and Hansen, went and pretty quickly played for their new countries under family eligibility rules I’m hearing of plenty of young players going to Japan, Hong Kong and France in particular and developing there, some of whom go on to play for their new countries after five years residence.
It’s easy and cheap to change the Giteau law and start selecting these players. It’s wrong to assume that they will replace all the home grown talent; look at the All Blacks, they identify most of their talent early and then they play for the All Blacks still, but a few don’t come through that route. Whether it’s one or five of them, there are a few question mark positions in the Wallabies and the answers to them just might be uncapped and playing abroad!
A change to playing style may not be needed, Schmidt is finding a team after all. But RA now has a lot of say in most of the SR teams, except the Reds. Talking to Schmidt, talking to the SR teams, moving them to play in “the Australian way” so there’s continuity from club to country might help. And it might help both the SR teams and the Wallabies, steal some of Schmidt’s genius and apply it so they can start winning against the Kiwis. You never know…
Will it work?
I started out with the restrictions of fast fixes and no money. With those constraints I think these give Australian rugby a good start. They’re things that you can look at and say “successful teams do this” and that you can copy.
Magically having the equivalent of 30,000 mad Toulouse fans turn up for every home game is not in my gift. Likewise, while I would certainly be looking at something like an NPC in Australia. I would add pathways for players to move up and down from that to SR teams, from day one. But both of these take money and time to implement. There would be updates about the progress but starting today I’d hope for 26 September as the start date. Starting against the World Cup? Probably not the best plan, but I am open to persuasion on this.
Doing nothing is not an option. As an outsider I’m happy to step on some toes to make some positive changes. If you look to rugby around the world, what changes would you make?
