Boring Boks show Wallabies blueprint to World Cup success
The Springboks proved there’s no great secret to winning the World Cup - but there are two golden rules every team should follow - play to your strengths and don’t obsess about it.
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If Rugby Australia really are interested in getting Eddie Jones to coach the Wallabies, they should wait a while before calling him.
Right now, he’s in no mood for chatting because he’s still drowning his sorrows after England’s 32-12 flogging by South Africa in the World Cup final.
"The only thing I’m worried about now is having a few beers,” he said.
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“And after we have a few beers today we’ll probably have a few more beers tomorrow. And then probably Monday. And then maybe we have to pull up stumps."
Jones still hasn’t got over Australia’s heartbreaking loss to England in the 2003 World Cup final so he could be brooding over this loss for a while.
The English went into the final as one of the shortest-priced favourites ever after smashing the Wallabies and the All Blacks and Jones doesn’t have any idea why his team froze when everything was on the line.
“This is one of the things that happens in high-level rugby,” he said.
“We thought our preparation this week was good but, in the end, it wasn’t, because we didn’t play well.
"You can have the most investigative debrief of your game and you still don’t know what was wrong. It just happens sometimes.
“It’s not a good day for it to happen. We’re going to be kicking stones now for four years and it’s hard to kick stones for four years.”
If Jones - and Rugby Australia for that matter - really want the answers, they only have to look at South Africa.
The Springboks proved there’s no great secret to winning the World Cup - but there are two golden rules every team should follow.
First of all, it’s OK to be boring because winning is the only thing that matters. It’s called being smart and playing to your strengths.
And putting all your eggs in the World Cup basket doesn’t work either.
Michael Cheika was so obsessed about winning the Webb Ellis Cup after steering the Wallabies to the 2015 final that he lost sight of what Wallabies supporters really want.
As fantastic as the World Cup is, the next one is not until 2023 so the planning doesn’t need to start today.
Australian fans are fed up with the tired old excuses that the Wallabies are rebuilding for the next World Cup when all they really want to do is see them winning the next game they are playing.
Winning the Bledisloe Cup back would be a good start. Or winning the Rugby Championship. Or kicking the Poms while they’re down and ending that ugly seven-match losing streak.
In fact, no one in Rugby Australia or the Wallabies should even utter the words World Cup until 2022 because planning for it now is a guaranteed recipe for disappointment.
The Springboks are proof that short term planning works much better.
They were in total disarray just a year ago when they sacked their failing head coach Allister Coetzee and gave Rassie Erasmus the job and now they’re world champions.
And Rugby Australia should know better than anyone else that that’s the way to success.
Greg Smith replaced Bob Dywer after the Wallabies bombed out at the 1995 World Cup and everyone went into panic mode, but it didn’t work.
Smith quit after a string of disastrous results in 1997.
Rod Macqueen took over the reins and introduced a simple but highly effective game plan and we all know what happened next - two years later the Wallabies won the World Cup.