It’s with much pleasure we submit this article from long time G&GR member Adrian, and it’s a timely piece at that. And it’s with much thanks and a pure coincidence too, to fellow G&GR member, ‘Wonky Donkey’, that we are permitted to use his cartoon ‘Must be the Monet’ as the feature image. Welcome to the G&GR crapparazzi gents and take it away, Adrian:
For years, followers of rugby (rugby union) have seen themselves in competition with
rugby league. Unfortunately (or should that be fortunately?) most rugby league followers don’t know that there’s any competition going on!
Recently Spiro Zavos wrote in ‘The Roar’ that Eddie Jones was an aficionado of league, and
because league is more structured, the right place to find assistant coaches is in league.
Spiro’s quite right, league is much more structured, with a minor restart every tackle, and a
major restart every 6 tackles, dropped ball or touch finder.
What he doesn’t mention, and Jones doesn’t understand, is that every successful league
team has about 3 players who are authorised to alter the structure and have the skills to do
that when they notice that something different has happened. These players aren’t wingers.
Ex-league players who coach are not bad per se and are overall successful (e.g. Sean
Edwards), but not when it’s their first gig.
Jones just doesn’t get a lot of things, and is clearly a control freak. I think control freak first
and league devotee second, but it doesn’t matter. He’s already said that the role of his
assistant coaches is to relay his detailed plans to the boys. Plans, not ideas.
Jones himself was a plugger who achieved his moderate level of success as a player by
being surrounded by heads up players such as the Ellas, and being coached by guys like
Geoff Mould from Matraville High School. Either he doesn’t see this, and/or he wants to prove
them wrong. Rugby union (and Jones) constantly gets it wrong when trying to understand what it can
and cannot learn from league.
As Spiro says in the article, the relationship is like tennis and squash. When they are 14, very good tennis and squash players can switch. This is the age when rugby union recruits league boys into their “pathways”, which are also known as private schools. The trouble is that they recruit very big guys or very fast guys and not heads up or creative guys. Why? Because you get instant success with big or fast guys. A creative guy is no use if there aren’t players to capitalise on the half break. Much easier to get it to the big/fast guy who will run over or run around the opposition. Another negative side effect of this is to bring on players such as Lolesio who are “link men” designed to have no creativity
themselves, but a quick pass to the big/fast guy.
I’ve played, then coached, then watched both codes for 60 years. I guarantee that apart from
Mark Ella, rugby union has NEVER recruited the very best players from league whether
they be 14 or 25. Mark Ella was a 16 year old at a time when government high schools
were accepted (albeit temporarily) into the rugby community in the 1970s, when rugby
seemed to be on its last legs.
Mostly, though, rugby decision makers rarely understand what’s going on. They always
recruit guys similar to those they already have and ignore “gift horses” when they are in their
face.
The player’s rugby has recruited have (as adults anyway) always been a rung (or two) below
the very best players in league, but “sold” to the rugby community as being the best. They
never got Andrew Johns, but they got Wendell Sailor, Tuqiri and Rogers, three for the price of
Johns. They didn’t get Cameron Smith, they got Folau for half the price. They haven’t got
Nathan Cleary, they’ve got Sua’ali’i for a quarter of the price.
I’m not saying that they should buy Cleary, but wasting money on the sort of players we
already, have is practically criminal when the grassroots situation is understood.
Brilliant Australian, Storm and Roosters halfback Cooper Cronk was already playing rugby
as a junior in the early naughties, and the star of the Broncos team in last week’s Grand
Final, Ezra Mam played rugby all through high school.
If private school scholarships had been given to guys like Cameron Munster and Jonathan
Thurston they could’ve joined Darcy Swain and Nemani Nadolo and there might’ve been a few backs to choose from this century. Better still, some actual junior competitions in the Western Suburbs, wherever they are?
When it comes to tactics, promotion and ethics, rugby is similarly in the dark about what
the competition is doing. This is to some degree understandable, given that the “old school tie” chaps who actually run the game are isolated from most of society. It is not acceptable though to “slag off” at the completion without at least some runs on the board.
I mentioned above that league followers don’t necessarily see themselves in competition
with union. I could give many a sociological answer to this, but one indicator may be the 4m
(3.5m FTA-TV) viewing audience for a certain grand final v 350,000 for the Bledisloe Cup.
In my opinion, 20% of league followers follow union when it’s any good, and are a key reason
why Sydney crowds for a Wallabies Test can be as low as 13,000 for the Argentina test, which I recently attended, or as high as 80,000+, stadium configuration permitting. The league people I know or have known have all heard of the All Blacks, Ken Catchpole, Mark Ella, John Eales, and perhaps Quade Cooper. They haven’t heard of Donaldson, Nic White or Valetini. They can’t remember Vunivalu. They have heard of the Matildas.
There needs to be an understanding of what league is and isn’t doing before we either copy
them blindly or slag them off. With Eddie Jones, is his league talk just talk, the way his 3 x 5/8s at the World Cup was just talk, or SR form is what counts talk, or “I am the greatest” is just talk?
The RWC train wreck people will have to sift through a pile of issues including: grassroots, pathways, class-old school tie control, money, junior coaching, school coaching, SR coaching, scrums for penalties, NRC, SR, RC, administration, ethics, captain’s calls, sacking Dave Rennie, human resources, promotion, TV, Twiggy Forest, talking, talking, talking, talking, Wallaby coaching, selections, recruitment, talking, control freakism, Japan, money, money, money etc, etc, oh, and rugby league.
