No matter how many times a conversation about rugby arises, one of these words is used; and then the administration proceeds to prove the validity of the language.
It still does not seem clear to the people running our game, that they are running it into the ground. It’s a harsh but legitimate and recurring assessment.
Over the holiday period, Rugby Australia published their 2019 Rugby World Cup review run by Pat Howard. Howard is no longer in his role as high-performance manager of Australian Cricket for obvious reasons. Why our game would turn to him is an unyielding mystery.
He recently ran a review of the once mighty English club Leicester Tigers. Right up to the end of the English Premiership season, Leicester looked set to be relegated for the first time in their proud history. They dodged a bullet. Saracens have been relegated. Nonetheless, Howard’s judgment surely means little, except that it is obviously littered with flaws.
However, as part of his Rugby Australia recommendations, for what they’re worth and I would suggest not much, he suggested that our game should make a “depth chart” of coaching talent and commit to developing that talent.
Clearly, those in rugby think little of Howard’s judgment because, when the next available coaching job in Australia became available, the general manager of the Waratahs, Tim Rapp, appointed a NSW under-16 rugby league coach as the defence coach of the Waratahs.
We have a thriving club rugby competition, full of ambitious young coaches, yet Rapp appoints another journeyman to coach defence for the Waratahs.
The appointment of Phil Bailey is nothing short of a disgrace and a firm slap in the face to every club coach.
Rapp has been general manager of rugby at the Waratahs since Michael Cheika departed to coach the Wallabies in 2015. Since that time, Rapp has churned through coaches while the Waratahs have gone from Super Rugby champions to easybeats.
In 2019, the Waratahs finished 12th in a 15-team competition; in 2017, they finished 16th in an 18-team competition.
For the biggest rugby franchise in Australia, this is a joke. If the Wallabies are to be strong, the Waratahs must be strong.
For the life of me, I cannot see how this could be with Rapp in charge.
This is the bloke who told Roosters rugby league star Angus Crichton that he could not make the Waratahs squad until he was 23 years of age. Crichton has just turned 23 and has already played four State of Origin games and 52 NRL games. He made his debut in the NRL, in 2016, as a 19-year-old.
Rapp has poor judgment of talent and therefore is completely unfit to be running elite rugby in NSW.
Then we get the appointment of Bailey to the Waratahs in a defence role. Prior to taking a job coaching under-16s for the NSWRL, he coached rugby in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong rugby is the equivalent of a Subbies third division side. It is a long way off being Super Rugby. Prior to that he helped the US Eagles at the 2015 Rugby World Cup in England. His team conceded an average of 60 points a game.
So, whatever defence he is coaching, he might need to make some adjustments.
Successful teams know that defence wins titles. How can the Waratahs aim to win a title with a bloke with such a record coaching defence?
Well may we ask where the Waratahs can expect to go in 2020. We have a journeyman head coach, a journeyman defence coach, all the consequence of the decision-making of a journeyman general manager who, if his recent record is to mean anything, is taking rugby in NSW on a journey to nowhere.
Surely our gifted players deserve better.
Make no mistake, the Waratahs have some outstanding young talent. With the appropriate coaching, some magnificent careers could be launched. Angus Bell is a young prop. His father is a former Wallaby and is the current scrum coach for the Waratahs. Bell was chased hard by the Crusaders when he left Newington College. He is so good, the Kiwis wanted him.
But the Waratahs have not managed to keep young Joe Brial, the son of former Wallaby Michael Brial. He has joined the Crusaders, the Super Rugby champions, on a contract that, obviously, NSW could not provide. The young man was part of the 2019 Australian under-18s team that recently beat New Zealand.
What those running rugby in NSW and Australia, including Rapp, do not seem to understand is that they are in competition with the NRL and other rugby franchises to identify and develop talent.
To keep the talent in NSW, the Waratahs need to have a world-class coaching team and world-class standards. Sadly, at this stage, the Waratahs resemble a pub team.
The coaching staff have been thrown together and the playing squad faces the reality that experienced players have chosen to move on. I wonder why.
It is hard to argue with numbers, yet the numbers show that from 2015 to 2017, immediately after Cheika, and on Rapp’s watch, the Waratahs’ crowds dropped by 22 per cent, almost a quarter.
If that trend has continued at that rate, the crowds may well be down now by 50 per cent since 2015. There is no escaping that the decline in results and crowds has happened on Rapp’s watch.
Prior to joining the Waratahs in 2015, he was a schoolteacher with no experience in sports administration or high-performance sport. How on earth does this happen; but, more importantly, how can you expect results in this environment?
Look at the team at the top. We have Rapp, an underperforming general manager of rugby, a journeyman Kiwi as head coach and now they have hired an under-16 rugby league defence coach.
And this is the biggest rugby franchise in Australia which not so many years ago was the greatest provincial side in the world.
The effective portions of a gun are the lock, the stock and the barrel. Without them, you are firing blanks. And that is NSW rugby today.
I have said many times, and I will say it again, those responsible for this decline should be gone — lock, stock and barrel.
Outstanding! Young gun who has caught Eddie Jones’s eye
When the Australian U20s took on and beat former Wallabies coach Eddie Jones’ Japanese U23 side a number of young Aussies stood out - including one he labelled “outstanding’’.
‘It was a shock’: Four try hero, stars, standouts in 1st Colts rugby
There was a try scoring standout, a club flexing muscle, a massive scoreline, a close encounter and a favourite back in the winners circle in Rd 2 of Sydney rugby 1st Colts. Result, news wrap
There are synonyms for the word shambles. They include chaos, mess, muddle, confusion, disorder, disarray, disorganisation and havoc. Take your pick.