Australian rugby coaching greats to attend summit with Michael Cheika to rebuild pathways to success

A MAJOR step towards rebuilding Australian rugby as a world leader will be taken this week when a man credited as the brains behind a golden Wallabies era gets welcomed back into the fold.

Legendary Australian rugby coach Dick Marks.

A MAJOR step towards rebuilding Australian rugby as a world leader will be taken on Thursday when a man credited as the brains behind a golden Wallabies era is welcomed back into the fold.

The ARU’s former head of national coaching Dick Marks will be of several leading Australian rugby figures who’ll gather for a coaching summit in Sydney.

Also attending will be former Wallabies coach Bob Dwyer, current Wallabies coach Michael Cheika, ARU skills coach Mick Byrne, ARU high performance boss Ben Whitaker and respected ex-Wallaby and analyst Rod Kafer.

Michael Cheika has called a meeting of the minds.

At the top of the agenda will be rebuilding a program to “coach the coaches”, in a bid to not only help current Wallabies and Super Rugby coaches, but to create the next generation as well.

Marks was once the guru of national coach development in Australian rugby, after running the rugby program in the Rothmans National Sports Foundation from the early-1970s. He counted Dwyer among a long list of successful pupils.

“He did a phenomenal job with it, so they’ve decided it would be a good idea to revisit the program,” Dwyer said.

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“The first meeting is quite broad. But importantly it gets Dick Marks back involved and making a contribution.

“The contribution he made cannot be underestimated. It was fantastic, and it was the forerunner to a huge period of success. It produced a succession of coaches, and those coaches produced a following succession of coaches.

“I see the possibility of a new coach education program for Australian rugby, which I think is important and we have dropped the ball a bit there.

David Campese (L) shakes hands with former coach Bob Dwyer.

“It’s going to be about the philosophy of coaching and how to transfer from the practice pitch to the playing field.”

Dwyer said the success of Marks’ program — initially run over three days — was teaching the “how”, not the “what”.

“The important thing about the old program it told you not how to play but how to coach. It didn’t necessarily didn’t tell you what to coach, outside of some fundamentals that underpinned the game,” Dwyer said.

Dwyer rejects the notion Australian coaches should also teach the same things, and prescribe the same structures.

“We got into the idea that structure is good is people understood where they were going and all that. It’s rubbish and at our best we have never played that way, and at our worst we have played that way,” Dwyer said.

Dwyer said if effective coaching education strategies are put in place — and are embraced — then results can start flowing through Australian rugby quickly.

“I say this often and I believe it to be true: good, accurate, long-term strategies produce short-term results,” Dwyer said.

Legendary Australian rugby coach Dick Marks.

“If you start doing things right, you get the benefit straight away and as you continue, the benefit grows.”

Though done informally in the past, the return of Marks and Dwyer into the ARU’s brains trust is hoped to be the forerunner to the return of many esteemed minds also being invited back in the tent. There is a feeling that Australian rugby has for too long allowed valuable IP drift away from the game when a coach is replaced or an era changes.

Successful ex-coaches like Rod Macqueen, Alan Jones, Ewen McKenzie and Jeff Miler are viewed as untapped resources, along with respected ex-Wallabies. The sole goal: get Australian rugby winning again.

“Nick Farr-Jones has never been invited to a Waratahs or Wallabies session to talk with halfbacks. How ridiculous is that?” Dwyer said.

Though baulking at the word “summit”, Cheika said a meeting of the minds to help Australian rugby was worthwhile.

“But the big thing is when we have ideas from something like that, we also have to have to ability to implement them, as opposed to having one for each Super Rugby team and seeing what happens from there,” Cheika said last week.

“It will be my job then to get whatever might come out of that and go to the Super Rugby coaches and say: “What do you think about this?” What do you think about that?”.”

Originally published as Australian rugby coaching greats to attend summit with Michael Cheika to rebuild pathways to success