Greats back former bar owner Dave Rennie to shake up Wallabies
Wallabies fans will need convincing Kiwi coach Dave Rennie is the right fit but the former bar owner and schoolteacher, who has been an influence on Sonny Bill Williams, was the best man available.
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Kiwi coach Dave Rennie is a former bar owner who must be given time to stir some fizz back into the flat cocktail that the Wallabies have become.
Former Test coach John Connolly and two-time World Cup-winner Tim Horan were two prominent voices backing the Rennie call as the right one.
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Both would prefer an Aussie voice in charge of the Wallabies but there simply wasn’t one available with credentials even half as good.
That’s an incredible development flaw in Australia’s rugby system which director of rugby Scott Johnson promised would be fixed so “in the next cycle (from 2024) we have genuine (Aussie) contenders for this position.”
The future can wait because everyone is asking just who the Wallabies are wedded to for the next four years now the Michael Cheika era is done.
The former schoolteacher bought a bar called The Lonely Goatherd in Upper Hutt in the 1990s during his days around Wellington so he lived some life before his two decades as a professional coach.
Wallabies fans will greet his appointment cautiously.
They will need convincing he is the right fit but will embrace him quickly if he beats Ireland twice in July on his first mission.
Connolly made the first strong points from a brief association with Rennie and feedback he had heard on the former strong-running Wellington centre.
“One of the weaknesses of coaches is that they put in assistants they can control yet you had Rennie, at the Chiefs, bringing in a former All Blacks coach (Wayne Smith) to work beside him (for two titles),” Connolly said.
“That’s a good sign of a strong figure in my book, someone who doesn’t feel threatened and can build the best coaching team possible around him.
“Players connect to him well, he’s well respected, he knows he has to communicate well with the Super Rugby sides and he’s a more measured personality than Cheika.”
When the Wallabies appointed Kiwi Robbie Deans in 2008, also after a World Cup quarter-final crash to England, they did so a week after he had missed the All Blacks job.
“It’s good that we are not left with the crumbs on the Kiwi table after the new All Blacks coach is named,” Connolly said.
“We have been masters of our own destiny with this call and it’s time to get behind it.
“You’d always prefer an Australian coach, and something has to be done about better developing local coaches, but I’m perfectly happy we’ve got a good coach.”
When All Black Sonny Bill Williams recently announced his switch to rugby league with Toronto Wolfpack, he name-checked major influences in his rugby journey.
Rennie got a mention for helping to “put that belief in me when there was still the unknown whether I could go all the way or not”.
Originally published as Greats back former bar owner Dave Rennie to shake up Wallabies