The breakdown of rugby

The furore surrounding the Wallabies shows that, despite the anger, people still care. But for how much longer?

Wallabies taste defeat to England in Oita

It was too hot for beanies and scarfs but they certainly wore their gold jerseys proudly as they milled in their expectant thousands in the forecourt of Oita Stadium, all those supporters who had travelled to Japan to support the Wallabies.

None of the 19 visiting countries at the Rugby World Cup had more supporters in Japan, save for England where the mood to get away from Brexit and all mentions of it was simply overpowering. Estimates ranged up to 40,000 Australians and from the look of it, while they certainly weren’t all in Oita for the quarter-final against England last Saturday, they surely had filled out whole slabs of the stands for earlier matches in Sapporo, Tokyo and Shizuoka.

Sure, a few hours later it was possible to pick up a Wallaby jersey going cheap on Gumtree — “only worn once, in error” — the advertisements would wryly observe, but generally Australian rugby supporters do what they normally do in times of crisis: circle the wagons and wait for better times to come. And Australia has never failed to rebound at the next World Cup after going out in the quarters.

Whether that happens this time depends on the decisions Rugby Australia makes right now. And right now it is making a complete hash of it.

Flawed review

First up, it has fatally narrowed the scope of any review to examining the look of any future Wallabies coaching and management structure. Instead, it should be empanelling some of the most distinguished minds in Australian rugby to draw up a shortlist of contenders for the head coaching role. At the very least, these “eminent persons” should be setting out the requirements of employment.

It should also be re-examining decisions made by RA in recent times, especially the determination made a year ago to reappoint Wallabies coach Michael Cheika through to the end of the World Cup. Expert after expert advised he could not win it, not stubbornly playing the style of running rugby he was wedded to. Yet still they went ahead, seemingly to guard against Cheika taking an “I told you so” approach when and if Australia failed.

That the review process even involves RA chief executive Raelene Castle and director of rugby Scott Johnson is sheer madness. Castle has been the victim of some vicious press and social media trolling and many of her “crimes” — her handling of the Israel Folau matter, for example — were not of her making.

It is hardly likely she would have sacked Australia’s foremost and highest paid player without a firm directive from the RA board. Indeed, one wonders how much of the criticism directed at her is simply because she is a woman acting in a role that has always been a male preserve.

But she is making herself impossible to defend. Some of the rugby advice she has taken, especially before Johnson’s appointment, has been exposed as manifestly flawed. It is not as though she wasn’t warned. “The proof will be in the pudding,” she would always say. Well, Raelene, that surely is true. And the souffle didn’t rise to the occasion.

Johnson, too, has some tough questions to answer. Is Glasgow Warriors coach Dave Rennie, the New Zealander heavily rumoured to succeed Cheika — who resigned as coach following the Wallabies’ loss to England last weekend — a personal friend? And how did that play out in him getting the job?

The situation may be entirely innocent and it is hardly surprising two men working within the Scottish Rugby Union system could develop a friendship. But then to have Johnson sitting on the panel reviewing decisions he helped to make is just lunacy. Whether RA chairman Cameron Clyne and Castle believe it is so or not, there is a very real bloodlust out there in the rugby community for their heads and for them to survive they must conduct themselves like Caesar’s wife. Scrupulously.

It may also be time for Australians to review how they see the World Cup and its importance in the overall rugby calendar. Peaking, or at least attempting to peak every four years, but in the meantime maintaining a win ratio of only 38.63 per cent, 17 wins out of 44 Tests against Tier One nations (those involved in the Rugby Championship or the Six Nations), is effectively unsustainable. There is too much competition already for the attention of rugby-age children. A win rate of just over one Test in three is hardly going to inspire them to throw themselves into the game.

The Wallabies need to win, and regularly. Even if it was a statistical outlier, a false beacon, the 47-26 defeat of the All Blacks in Perth in August demonstrates that Australia is capable of beating anyone. (And please, New Zealanders, don’t give us the “we were reduced to 14 men in the second half” spiel ... how many times have the All Blacks boasted of their ability to outscore the opposition even when they have a man in the sin bin?)

The flaws in their game were obvious and widely commented upon, to no avail. Conceding 35 points — as the Wallabies did 13 times in 44 Tests between the 2015-19 World Cups — was deplorable. And it put way too much pressure on a predictable Australian attack that the whole rugby world had torn down and studied.

What on earth did Cheika say last year, one wonders, to convince RA directors he could somehow turn the ship around?

Healthy in clubland

That said, Australian rugby has always proven itself remarkably resilient. Officials point confidently to the fact that for the second year running participation numbers are up. Granted, the public has become wary of such numbers, and with good reason. They are massively inflated by the growth of women’s rugby which is starting from a low base. But Clyne is adamant that this year there also has been a rise in 15-a-side men’s rugby.

Certainly that accords with the general mood of the game. As counterintuitive as it might seem in face of the Wallabies’ dud performances, the culling of Perth’s Western Force and the sacking of Folau, rugby actually is in robust good health in clubland. The Shute Shield competition in Sydney and the Hospitals Cup in Brisbane are thriving, perhaps better than at any time in the past 20 years. RA might be entitled to virtually none of the credit, given that this was very much community rugby mobilising, but at least it recognised the trend and got the heck out of the way.

The equal-worst World Cup performance of the Wallabies has coincided neatly with the best performances Australia has perhaps ever had at the under-18/schoolboys and under-20 levels.

It wasn’t just that the under-18 side beat their New Zealand counterparts. It was the manner in which they beat them, pummelling them in defence and carving them up with a skill that evoked faint and fading memories of that wonderful Australian Schoolboys side of 1978, the one that featured the Ella brothers, the one in which Wally Lewis was merely a bench player. For one player, hooker Billy Pollard, that epic win over NZ convinced him to turn his back on eight NRL clubs and sign instead with the ACT Brumbies.

The under-20s side, who wore the revived title of “the Junior Wallabies”, lost the age group World Cup final by a single point. These are the players — backrowers Fraser McReight and Harry Wilson of Queensland, prop Angus Bell and Will Harrison of NSW and his halves partner Michael McDonald of WA, Victorian centre Semisi Tupou and NSW flyer Mark Nawaqanitawase — who will start flooding into the Wallabies over the next couple of seasons.

Most of the under-20s side are now signed with the Super Rugby provinces. In the Waratahs’ case, it may be that the dozen players they grabbed might help them through a rebuilding phase, but for the Queensland Reds the under-20s stars could just become the finishing touch to a young side — the bulk of which has been locked in place for the next four years — that will include new Wallabies sensation Jordan Petaia along with James O’Connor, Izack Rodda, Taniela Tupou, Lukhan Salakaia-Loto, Isaac Lucas and Tate McDermott.

International code

And while the critics might accusingly point to the fact that three of the four Super Rugby coaches are foreigners, there is another way of looking at it. Yes, Reds coach Brad Thorn was born in New Zealand and played 59 Tests for the All Blacks but he also played 200 games for the Brisbane Broncos and eight league — or Super League — Tests for Australia. So, too, with Dave Wessels, the Melbourne Rebels coach. His mild accent might betray his South African roots but he has become an Australian citizen. And with Brisbane-born Dan McKellar heading up the ACT Brumbies, the only real foreigner is the Tahs’ new coach, Rob Penney.

It’s been suggested that rugby should know its place and accept that it is just a niche sport, played out on school ovals and club parks, and that never again should it aspire to matching the behemoths, the AFL, the NRL.

Yet it has something that those two codes can’t match — a realistic international component — and while it maintains the strength of its Super Rugby clubs and the Wallabies through the Giteau Law, which effectively says only players who have more than 60 Test caps can be chosen from foreign clubs, it remains a player, albeit a minor one. The furore that greeted the Wallabies’ early demise in Japan demonstrates that, however much anger is out there, people still care. Yet for how much longer?

World Cup balm

As much as it would be reassuring to say that Australian rugby is sailing into clear air, a couple of major storms still need to be weathered. The Folau case lurks on the horizon. There is a court-ordered mediation set down for December but if that delivers no joy, both parties are set to join battle in February. It surely will become a test case in Australian law and every other major sport is just giving thanks it was rugby that was hit. Observe the speed with which rugby league engaged reverse gear when there was talk of Folau rejoining the 13-a-side code.

The all-important broadcast deal is still out there as well. Effectively, this is the money rugby needs to survive and while NZ and South Africa have done their deals with broadcasters — with NZ trumpeting its success — Australia doesn’t quite know what it has to sell. It is investigating whether the GPS competitions in Sydney and Brisbane can be televised, so too a tweaked or revamped National Rugby Championship. It has no real idea what the bottom line might be. If it comes in on par with its current deal, everyone will breathe a sigh of relief. Sadly, that’s unlikely.

A little down the track, the clouds recede. The windfall of a British and Irish Lions tour looms in 2025, while there is now a genuine belief that SANZAAR, the southern hemisphere rugby collective, will put forward Australia as its only candidate for the 2027 World Cup.

Given that the 2015, 2019 and 2023 all were allocated to countries north of the equator, Australia is looking good although the US is fast emerging. Indications are that World Rugby might take its lead from the International Olympic Committee and award two World Cups simultaneously — 2027 to Australia, perhaps, 2031 to the Americans.

But for Australian rugby to reach these plentiful years, it must for the moment do as Ireland, Japan and France are now doing — coming to terms with the disappointment of a World Cup quarter-final defeat and staying alive.

Not tearing itself apart.