Rugby: Raelene Castle’s 200-day report card

Rugby Australia CEO Raelene Castle. Photo: AAP

During my three-week absence, there have been some green shoots in ‘Australian rugby, but sadly they owe nothing to the administration.

Kurtley Beale turned on a stellar performance, when NSW looked comprehensively beaten against Otago in the Super Rugby quarterfinals last Saturday. And from a 23-6 deficit, Beale led a very inspired and inspiring Waratahs to a magnificent comeback victory. The Lions in South Africa, of course, will be a different kettle of fish.

But the removal of the Western Force from the face of Super Rugby continues to haunt the administration.

What has not been reported is that the West Australian Schoolgirls team has won the National Schoolgirls Rugby Championship, beating NSW 14-10.

Financial support for the team was provided from the Future Force Foundation. Western Australia again leading the way, even if they are unwanted by Rugby Australia chairman Cameron Clyne and his out-of-touch board.

It should be acknowledged as a matter of pride by Rugby Australia that members of the Future Force Foundation are making an enormous contribution to rugby in Western Australia and in particular to the State Schoolgirls and other elite pathway teams.

Well may we ask what has been achieved by the banishment of Western Australia.

Certainly there has been no improvement in the standard of Australian rugby and the results we were promised haven’t materialised; and the funding that was allegedly saved by the axing of the Force to be redirected to grassroots rugby hasn’t materialised either. Sadly, the green shoots wither in this rugby drought.

And on leadership, lack of it, let me address that issue again.

Where is the leadership of Australian rugby in relation to the player punch-ups involving Rebels players last weekend? Raelene Castle has been silent.

She had plenty to say when Israel Folau tweeted. Surely players involved in potentially life-threatening physical violence off the field should be of more concern than any nonviolent social media beat-up.

Castle has been occupying her leather chair at the fancy new Rugby Australia headquarters for around 200 days, so it’s surely appropriate to look at the report card.

Castle continues to charge kids a registration fee to play rugby, while the AFL encourages kids to play for free. They give kids footballs and match tickets.

So you’d have to say, on the grassroots front, Castle would struggle to get a C and the examiner would certainly say “must try harder”.

She’s also made a lot of noise about the size-for-age initiative, claiming rugby to be the first code to do this in Australia.

She may not be spruiking about this initiative for much longer, because research from Wellington, New Zealand, published in the International Journal of Sport and Health Research suggests similar programs are driving players away from the game across the Tasman.

Their research shows that players who are moved away from playing with their mates and forced to play with a different age group because of their weight, are 50 per cent more likely to give up playing, compared with kids who play in the same team as their peers.

In other words, the bigger or smaller kids want to play with their mates. So Castle’s new size-for-age initiative may well fail, as it has in New Zealand.

On the report card, it would have to be no better than a C.

We’ve just been through the Schoolboy rugby trials. The 2018 Australian Schoolboys side has been named.

How can we ask these young players to play four times in a week? It becomes a last-man-standing approach that’s outdated and dumb.

And Bob Wallace and his Australian Schoolboys Council need a rocket from Rugby Australia for putting these players through such a torturous campaign.

In 2016, the Irish Rugby Union and Ulster University published a medical study in the British Medical Journal that’s widely regarded as a key study in relation to schoolboy rugby and playing loads. That study shows that around 5 per cent of players are injured in every First XV rugby match. The numbers are closer to 10 per cent when these matches are representative games.

Schoolboys are conditioned to play one game a week, so imagine the injury risk when players are asked to play four times in one week.

In the light of these statistics, the Australian Schoolboys Council is reckless in the extreme for sticking with the current format.

And it further highlights how out of touch Wallace and his Old Boys’ club have become.

Rugby Australia should pull the plug on the Australian Schoolboys’ system and run their own Australian Under 18 program.

This has already happened in England where, like Australia, their National Schools Program had become a liability, not an asset. We’re at that point now. It’s time to sever ties with the Wallace club. This is a D on the report card.

In talent development, it would appear there has been some effort made by Michael Cheika and others to try to retain some of our best young players. But I’m hearing that NRL clubs and New Zealand rugby franchises have again been active in their efforts to recruit.

However, this year, for the first time in a long time, our game is mobilising to compete for talent.

That’s a massive change from the previous attitude of let them go, we can’t afford to keep them. The fact is we can’t afford not to keep them.

Anyone who follows sport in Europe knows that the big sporting clubs find it far more financially beneficial to develop their own players rather than buy rock stars.

For too long now, the focus at Rugby Australia has been to sign players from other codes on massive money. That money would have paid for 20 to 40 full-time academy players.

Hopefully we’re heading in the right direction in this area and Cheika should be applauded for taking the time to meet and encourage these talented schoolboys to stay in our game.

It’s a B+ on the report card and we could only hope the resources will be sufficient to encourage our boys to stay with rugby.

Which brings us to the professional game itself. We are continuing to lose players to Europe, with more and more Super Rugby players voting with their feet.

When Rugby Australia pulled the pin on the Western Force, they created an oversupply of players, so the Australian Super Rugby franchises have had an advantage in contract negotiations.

But it’s forcing quality players to go abroad and that’s diluting the strength and depth of playing talent in Australian rugby.

The argument that we don’t have enough players for another Super Rugby side is rubbish. We’ve got plenty of players and they’re good players, but we lack quality coaches. And we lack money.

So unless we can get more money into our game, which ought to be the job of the board of Rugby Australia, we’ll become a player factory for the big European clubs.

Currently, the Super Rugby playing budget sits at around $5 million — that’s half of what the NRL spend and about a quarter of the big-spending European clubs.

We have to face reality. Clyne is the reason Andrew Forrest and his proposed investment in our game has gone. Imagine if we had the resources Forrest offered.

We could grow our playing budgets and keep our best players. We could inject resources into retaining our best young players; and we could improve the academy systems required to keep producing great players.

The professional game in Australia is in jeopardy thanks to the cowardly retreat and abandonment of the Western Force.

We need resources to grow our game — player resources, infrastructure resources and financial resources. We need to welcome potential investors like Forrest.

The report card says D.

The recommendation at the end of the report card is that the chairman should fall on his sword as soon as possible, take the rest of the board with him and give Castle some breathing space to reopen talks with Forrest and others.

In short, it has not been a good first 200 days for Castle or Rugby Australia.

Certainly, she inherited a broken system. But she carries with her baggage in the fact that she may well have created such a system at the rugby league club she left.

The game is screaming out for some strong leadership and ideas. As Donald Trump would say, the swamp needs to be drained on many fronts.

Schoolboy rugby would be a great place to start.

If Castle can’t deal with a dinosaur like Wallace for the betterment of the schoolboy game, maybe she’s not cut out for the position.

We need action people. If you want the job, you’ve got to bloody well do the job.

The ship is taking on water and the captain is just shuffling the deck chairs.

In a previous column I suggested Rugby Australia is receiving a $50 registration fee from junior players. Fees of between $11.75 (for juniors) and $33.75 (for seniors) are paid to state and territory member unions, not to Rugby Australia. I also previously suggested Pat Langtry, a teacher at St Edmunds College, Canberra, had been coach of the Australian Schoolboys from 1999 to 2017 and was sole selector in 2017. Langtry served two terms as coach, with others taking the role in between. There were two other selectors in 2017.