Cricket and rugby share a crisis of administration

The blazer brigade are out in full and disreputable force in relation to the ball-tampering issue.

No one condones what the cricketers did but the massive over-reaction from blowhards, do-gooders and Mother Teresas, especially within the halls of Cricket Australia, prove conclusively that the problems of cricket lie with the administration, not the players.

To think that a young man who was rightly this newspaper’s Australian of the Year this year needs 12 security guards in order to board a plane in South Africa to a chorus of cries echoing, “cheat, cheat”. That is more shameful than any ball-tampering episode.

It is enough to sicken the most cynical but fair-minded person.

But, sadly, as with most sports today, the real problem lies with the “blazer brigade”. They don’t even understand the rudiments of justice.

No properly constituted tribunal seeking to prosecute even an axe murderer would go about things the way Cricket Australia have behaved.

The analogies with rugby are prescient and relevant. Here are administrators out of touch, interested only in saving their own backsides no matter the price that others might have to pay. So for Cricket Australia and its administrators, read Rugby Australia.

Cricket Australia have a high-performance manager who was sitting on his massive six-figure salary and his backside in ­Melbourne when all this was being played out in South Africa.

He keeps his job and three cricketers lose theirs.

Which prompts both the ­cricket and the rugby question: who sets the culture of the game?

I would assert that is set by the coach, the high-performance manager and the board.

And if they’re out of touch with players and with reality, there can be no surprise that the players are left on their own in critical circumstances in which errors of judgment will be made.

The Australian cricket coach has been cleared but has since stood down of his own volition. He didn’t know that during the lunch break his captain and vice-captain and a junior player were talking about doing what has been done for years and years and years — tampering with the cricket ball.

This brings into focus the role of the coach. Rugby has a high-performance unit and a so-called “coach development program”.

Well, if these are effective and functional, how is it that Michael Cheika is the only Australian coach working in Australia who has won anything at a serious level?

Of the current Super Rugby coaches, three are unproven non-Australian coaches and one is an unproven Australian coach.

It’s one thing to sign Jake White, a non-Australian with a winning record. But why would Rugby Australia support and develop unproven coaches? How does that help Australian rugby?

Or is the high-performance unit about as effective as the cricket high-performance unit?

The person whom Rugby Australia commissioned to develop Australian coaches is Rod Kafer.

Was the job advertised? He was appointed with a lot of fanfare. ­Appointed by whom?

And he’s described as a great thinker of the game. That being the case, why did he last one ­season as a head coach at Saracens in England.

And if, as is the case, he has not coached anyone to win anything in Australia?

What criteria was applied in charging him with developing Australian coaches.

Does that mean rugby money is being wasted developing Kiwi coaches and South African coaches when there is a plethora of ­talented Australian coaches working in Australia and abroad with winning track records. They can’t get a gig.

John Mulvihill is an outstanding coaching success story. There is no room for him here. But ­Cardiff, one of the cathedrals of rugby in Wales if not the world, have ­appointed him head coach.

Matt Taylor is with the Scottish national team; Les Kiss has done tremendous defensive work with London Irish; Matt O’Connor is with Leicester; so is Mark Bakewell; Jim McKay is with Kobe in Japan; Brad Davies with Scarlets in Wales; the list goes on and on.

But none of these are wanted. Who decides they’re not wanted? They’ve applied for jobs.

So if there’s a new “coach development program” which coaches are we developing?

And which coaches with a ­winning record, a winning culture are responsible for this program? How does someone like Kafer ­direct a winning program when he’s never done any winning?

Surely Scott Johnson, a superb player with Eastwood and NSW and the man behind the ­resurgence of Scottish rugby, ought to have been a candidate.

David Nucifora has been an ­integral part of a very successful Irish rugby program.

Would they be more qualified? How would you know unless the job was advertised and properly credentialed people were charged with the process of evaluation.

Kafer is a TV commentator. How are you a rugby commentator and an official with Rugby Australia?

How can you be objective about coaches and their teams’ performance when you may have been involved in the appointment of these coaches?

Kafer coached for one season and got out of the game for good. Can a bloke who can’t coach ­develop coaches?

These are the tough questions that no one is prepared to ask or answer. But to the rugby diehards, these decisions don’t make sense.

It’s unfathomable to many that the board of Rugby Australia has allowed the so-called high-­performance unit to make so many dubious decisions.

But is it about to get worse? The word on the street is that Simon Cron, the Australian under-20s coach, also a Kiwi, is being lined up to take over from the Kiwi Daryl Gibson as coach of the NSW Waratahs.

What does “lined up” mean? Will the job be advertised? And who will evaluate the applicants if there are any?

And if Rugby Australia are funding the Super Rugby teams as we are led to believe they are, why are we “developing” more non-Australian coaches with no winning track record at an elite level? The answer to that is simple.

The people making these ­decisions may not be the right ­people to be charged with that ­responsibility.

Now, of course, these truths will be uncomfortable for the CEO of NSW Rugby and the CEO of ­Australian Rugby because they, too, are Kiwis. We’re fast becoming a rugby joke. And our friends across the ditch are laughing.

When I have prominent and successful New Zealand rugby ­officials and coaches asking me how they can help to save Australian rugby I’m not just embarrassed, I’m angry.

Could you imagine the New Zealand Rugby Football Union ­allowing their teams to be run and coached by foreigners?

In New Zealand, young coaches are hand-picked and grow into good coaches through the ITM Cup and Super Rugby. They are encouraged to work in Europe. Witness Steve Hansen, Wayne Smith, Vern Cotter, Joe Schmidt, Dave Rennie and Warren ­Gatland. And they feed the All-Black machine.

In Australia, our best young coaches are ignored or, worse, ­promoted too soon and burnt.

Like Steven Smith as captain of Australian cricket, they’re left to their own devices, virtually abandoned and then dumped.

Just ask good people like Phil Mooney, Richard Graham or Nick Stiles. We’ve torched them and we recruit Kiwi coaches with little ­experience to replace them.

It’s no wonder Kafer wants to keep doing the TV commentary gig as well as running elite coaches. It may well be the safest place to be in the current rugby environment.

Finally, to those who argue, what are the answers?

I simply say there are a stack of people who’ve represented both concerns and ­solutions in the past. All ears at Rugby Australia are deaf.