Monday’s Rugby News has Dean Mumm slamming the ARU, Michael Cheika slamming the players’ fitness, the Italy coach positively slamming his players, and the women’s 7s slamming the opposition.
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Mumm Gets Loud
Dean Mumm has taken to his quaint writing desk, from which he probably also writes quiet death threats to all his online haters, to pen a piece about the ARU being bad and stuff.
Beginning by talking about how good some stuff is – like having the chance to don the ‘V’ jersey for Sydney Uni this weekend, and the rise in women’s rugby – Mumm then discusses the unfortunately well-worn complaints about how Force & Rebels players & staff, and their families, have been given an unfair deal during this fiasco.
Mumm then puts down his quill, to pick up another quill, with what they call the ‘stinger’ wrapped around it.
“The players are yet to see any detailed financial modelling from the ARU which shows material savings, and there have been no public commitments on where any of the theoretical savings would be reinvested, not to mention what it will cost to fight a legal battle on two fronts,” writes the RUPA president, in the SMH.
“What positive effect will that reinvestment have if we have disenfranchised rugby fans in the interim?
“We have to consider it a genuine possibility that the ARU may not be able to execute its preference to eliminate a team.
“Super Rugby must be an attractive week-to-week shop window for the game. It must prepare players for Test challenges and honours, and it must generate revenue to reinvest back into the community game. Clearly the current format of Super Rugby is failing on all three fronts, but why does changing the competition mean we have to eliminate the professional game from an entire state?”
Mumm then rounded out with a resolution from RUPA:
“The players collectively remain committed to the retention of five Australian teams, at the very least until the end of the current broadcast deal in 2020. Let’s revise the competition structure, not cut off our nose to spite our face.
“Let’s reduce off-field costs, duplication and governance issues, not further reduce the already limited market of rugby in Australia. Rugby simply can’t afford to lose fans from one entire state.It’s time for the ARU to bite the bullet and admit they can’t cut a team, and to commission a genuine feasibility study prior to making any changes to our Super Rugby representation in 2020 as the competition itself continues to evolve.
“Australian Rugby is not in a dire state if you seek to represent the people that make it great every weekend on fields around the nation, yet it has become clear that it will be much easier to celebrate the good news and the good people in the game once we’ve kicked the elephant out of the room.”
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Fitness Woes
Michael Cheika is real upset at the fact the Wallabies are unfit.
“We’ve been going hard at it over these three weeks and yes, there’ll be the edge off the players on the field a little bit, I understand that,” Cheika told rugby.com.au on the phone, after the journalist has posted a rant on Facebook.
“But to be at the level we need to be at to defeat New Zealand, (that’s what we need to do). I know that in everyone’s mind that everyone’s having a laugh when I say that, but I believe that with that clear goal we can go up there and do that.
“We’ve got to work extra hard and we’ve got to be prepared to work even harder once we come out of Super Rugby for that little block to be ready, because at least the fitness base can let us be in the hunt.
“Then from there it’ll be up to how good a footballers we are.”
Cheika was also firm that he believed fitness of the players is a national responsibility, and is not necessarily the fault of the Super teams.
“Right now, this is my responsibility to get the team fit enough to be ready for that game,” he said.
“We started in these three weeks, we’ll continue it over the next few weeks, while they’re playing Super Rugby. When we get the opportunity, we’ll get them in again, along with the skill work that we want to do, we’ll roast the fire a little bit more on getting them up to the level we think is needed to be competitive form a fitness point of view.
“It’s a key element to staying in the game – we’ve got to play for 80 and you’ve got to play hard for 80.”
Stephen Moore also reckons so, though he ominously didn’t say anything about lineout throwing.
“It shouldn’t be hard for Super Rugby to produce players that are ready to play Test match footy, I don’t know what the issue is there but we need to make sure the next two months or however long it is, we can’t waste a day,” he said.
“There is a gap between Super Rugby and Test rugby – the intensity’s up, but that doesn’t mean we can’t train like we have to to be able to play Test footy and that’s probably the key over the next period of time is making sure.
“We measure everything now so we should be able to tell that stuff pretty easily.”
Meanwhile, “Napalm” Naivalu (so called because he burns the opposition for pace) will be out for 6-7 weeks. Which means no more Super Rugby (oh no!) for him but he can come back in time to lose to New Zealand.
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Molto Bene
Italy almost beat the current crab juice champions, Australia, on the weekend, and they should have been 6 points ahead when Australia was 1 point ahead (due to a borderline TMO decision).
Their Irish coach, Conor O’Shea, is pretty chuffed by his team’s efforts.
“I’m gutted we lost – we’re not here to come second and we had a great chance out there but Australia can create things from nothing,” said O’Shea, according to rugby.com.au.
“I’m gutted for them (the players), but I’m so proud because over three weeks we saw, when we’re together how good we can become and I’m fast forwarding two years to a World Cup and we’ll have four months with them.”
While O’Shea didn’t say anything about the TMO decision, he did think it took the ref a while to card the Wallabies’ front row.
“You could argue the easier one was it went seven or eight penalties on scrums without a yellow card being given,” he said.
“We have to stay very mentally strong because we’re playing and competing at the very highest level against top teams.
We’re not getting any easy opponents, like pick a fight like a heavyweight getting up through, we’re playing at the top and as long as we keep on learning, working, we’ll turn that corner and when we do we’ll be happy.
“So, I never focus on that.”
Similar to Australian fans, O’Shea also ain’t a fan of his team’s silly decisions.
“At the moment, there’s so many little things going through my head as to ,’Why did we contest that last box kick at 28-27, just let the Wallabies have it,’ but that comes with experience,” he said.
“The more we put ourselves in these positions, the more actually it’ll start going the other way.”
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Rah!
The Aussie women’s 7s have smashed their opposition so far at the final tournament of the women’s 7s World Series.
Spain (41-0), Fiji (35-5) and France (20-17) have been left in the DUST in Clermont-Ferrand (thats in France), meaning the Pearls have steamrolled their way to the quarter-finals.
And what’s more – they’ve just BELTED the USA (31-14) in the Cup quarter-finals. Up next is Canada, and then either Russia, France, NZ or Fiji (at the time of writing). Rah!
Tim Walsh had a few words to say to rugby.com.au (note: he said the word ‘Rah!’ quite a lot; all instances have been edited out).
“We had a fantastic start against Spain, very clinical in the way we executed the game plan but the big thing was the defence,” said GAGR’s #1 friend.
“We took that into the Fiji (game) and showed some really good resilience in that defensive line.”
France posed a tough game, but he’s stoked his charges saw it through.
“I thought the standout player was Alicia Quirk, she’s a bit of a quiet achiever but she just organises the game really well and has worked hard on her defence. She does all the little things really well,” said Walsh.
Follow all progress here – worldrugby.org/womens-sevens-series/stage/1723/match#blog
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