Listen to NFL great Bill Belichick and let players pick the Wallabies captain

Michael Hooper is the Wallabies’ one true world-class player and should be reaffirmed as captain. Picture: AFP

Readers of this column would know I don’t want it to be a weekly notice board.

The dedicated rugby family is across what is going on in the game, all brought to you by our excellent rugby team at this newspaper.

Each week I seek to address what I see as necessary issues that must be resolved if we are to get back on top of the international rugby ladder.

Today, captaincy.

Michael Hooper clearly wants to retain the Wallaby captaincy, which he inherited from the scholarly Stephen Moore in 2017.

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Hooper has led the Wallabies on 46 occasions for a strike rate just below 50 per cent.

That should not disqualify him from continuing in the job.

What I find disappointing is that you have a ridiculously highly paid coach in Dave Rennie and a high-performance person, with no high performance, in Scott Johnson.

Neither has articulated how they are going to improve the winning rate for Australian rugby.

Let’s face it, if you do tomorrow what you did yesterday, you will get yesterday’s result.

If the Wallabies are to threaten in the 2023 World Cup in France, the winning rate has to improve enormously in the lead-up.

When Nick Farr-Jones captained the 1991 World Cup-winning Wallabies, he had a win rate, as captain, of 65 per cent.

When John Eales’s Wallabies won the 1999 World Cup, his success rate as captain was 75 per cent; and, out of interest, my 1984 Grand Slam captain, Andrew Slack, had a win rate of 75 per cent.

Rennie, the new Kiwi coach of the Wallabies, seems to be holding off on appointing a captain; the All Blacks named their new captain, Sam Cane, months ago.

A good captain is part of the organising and motivating architecture of any team.

The sooner such a leader is in place, the sooner he can become a reference point for what the team is wanting to achieve.

Is there a reason why there has been no announcement? Michael Hooper’s teammates are clearly behind him. Why wouldn’t they be? Hooper is a world class player.

New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick: ‘No one will follow a player who isn’t great at his own job.’ Picture: AFP

When the Wallabies were in crisis in Argentina in 2014 under Ewen McKenzie, Hooper stepped up and supported Kurtley Beale. It was gutsy stuff. He did the right thing. There were dysfunctional arrangements in place. Hooper, a 22-year-old captain, chose to take a stand. He put his neck on the line for what he believed was right.

Just this week, Matt To’omua, who played in both the 2015 and 2019 World Cups with Hooper, said, “I would caution against changing the captain. He has a wealth of knowledge and experience … he has been captain of Australia under Michael Cheika and now he is going to have a new coach to learn and develop from … from my point of view, it’s a no-brainer.”

Good stuff and gutsy stuff. Who should pick the Wallaby captain? What are the qualities of a great captain?

I was recently reading about the New England Patriots in the NFL and their wonderful coach, Bill Belichick.

In relation to the issue of captaincy, Belichick says, “No one will follow a player who isn’t great at his own job … I can say, through over 40 years of NFL experience, that leadership comes in a lot of shapes and sizes.

“And great leaders are not always the best talkers. I find the best captains are guys who are excellent at their role and put the best interests of the team ahead of themselves.”

Belichick lets his team pick its captain. In the NFL, they have a captain for their offence, defence and special teams. He expects them to set the example, show leadership and communicate really well between the players and the coaches.

Perhaps, then, the challenge for this new Wallaby team is to find more than one captain.

Imagine how empowered the group would be if the coach told the players, you boys pick the captains.

Will Rennie hand over that authority? I don’t think so.

Belichick has won six Super Bowls and is arguably the greatest coach in NFL history.

Dave Rennie has never coached at international level. Rennie is a rookie and rookie coaches don’t hand over power.

They tend to micromanage and grasp on to power so tightly they can crush teams and players.

That’s certainly the view of the former Glasgow and Scotland player, Rory Hughes, who had this to say about his old coach, Dave Rennie, this week:

“He makes you feel like you’re part of something, but, at the end of the day, it’s business … when you’re in the circle, you believe everything ... if you’re out of the circle, you’re on your own.

“It was a kick in the balls — you get so angry that you think, what’s the point of being here when you are treated like that?”

It’s interesting that Rennie was hired by Scott Johnson to change the culture of the Wallabies.

According to Hughes, the culture of Glasgow, Rennie’s previous club, was toxic.

It’s also worth remembering that with Wayne Smith at the Chiefs in 2012 and 2013, they won titles off the back of a great ­culture.

When Smith left to go back to the All Blacks, the Chiefs, under Rennie, stopped winning and the culture fell apart.

On Rennie’s watch, the 2016 Chiefs embarrassed themselves at the end-of-season “Mad Monday” celebrations.

The fiasco created enormous angst in New Zealand rugby and Rennie bolted to Glasgow shortly after to escape the heat.

So the guy who is meant to be changing the culture of the Wallabies for the better has some culture skeletons in the closet.

In my opinion, Michael Hooper should be retained as Wallaby captain now because he’s one of the few players we have who is truly world class.

Players will listen to him because he leads by example.

To use a rugby league term, “spine”. The Wallabies need a spine of five big leaders around which to build a team. Hooper is definitely one of them. Let the players decide the other four.

But then, of course, some would say that this means the players are picking the team because, presumably, those whom they choose would have to be in the team.

The problems mount. However, you have to determine a strategy.

I think Belichick knows what he’s doing at the Patriots and let’s hope the Wallabies get an opportunity to do it the same way.

Step aside Dave Rennie. Let the players pick their captains. It’s different, but I repeat what I said above.

If we are going to do this year what we did last year, we would have to expect last year’s results.