Rugby in Australia hurtling towards oblivion
As rugby league soars over the horizon with its dizzying running lines, precise passing and sheer athletic excellence, union fades further from the forefront of Australian sporting minds.
This date may one day be regarded as the beginning of the end for the Wallabies as a world force.
It was the day that Australia lost 28-27 to Italy. Italy? Australia’s coach, Dave Rennie, the shrewd New Zealander who led the Chiefs to consecutive Super Rugby titles before a solid stint with Glasgow, returned from the Australian European tour with a Test career record of 13 wins in 34 games – including a loss to Italy.
Never mind that on the same tour they beat Scotland before losing by one point, 30-29, to France. In Dublin they lost 13-10 to Ireland. They pushed two of the world’s best teams all the way. In a sane sporting world, this would be seen as progress, especially as they had beaten South Africa in that season’s Rugby Championship.
They had also lost 39-37 to a last-gasp Jordie Barrett try against the All Blacks. Anyone with any sense would have seen the steady route being taken towards the 2023 World Cup, but Rugby Australia didn’t bother with performance when it came to an assessment of Rennie. Instead they based their decisions purely on results. Australia could have beaten France by a solitary point and it wouldn’t have changed the reality of their progress one iota. That’s why performance is the first currency of evaluation.
Now, not quite two years on from the 2022 tour and Australia have suffered their worst defeat of all. Argentina’s 67-27 demolition on Saturday in Santa Fe represented the most points they had conceded and the second-biggest points differential in their history.
Next up the All Blacks, with three defeats in four games. However, New Zealand will take the broader picture into account. It’s a new management with fresh faces in a few positions. The loss to Argentina in Wellington rocked them but the two defeats by South Africa were narrow-margin losses against the world’s best. That will be factored into any assessment.
Alas for Australia, there will be pressure on a rugby nation that isn’t used to losing three of their past four games. New Zealand and their outstanding head coach (remember, Scott Robertson himself is new to the Test arena) will focus on performance rather than panic.
Rugby Australia explained their decision to appoint Eddie Jones as Rennie’s replacement – a coach England had recently dismissed – with a line that can’t help but make you laugh when you re-read it and recall what would happen come the World Cup. “Eddie,” explained Rugby Australia, “instinctively understands the Australian way of playing rugby.” The rugby world was also informed of his “deep understanding of our (Australia’s) rugby system” which would “lift the team to the next level”.
Australia found another level all right – the lowest level any Australian team has sunk to in my lifetime, as they were thrashed by Wales 40-6 and eliminated at the World Cup pool stage. It is worth remembering that in their final tour game of 2022, they came from behind to beat Wales 39-34 in Cardiff. Jones’s appointment made enough headlines to get rugby union on the back pages for a few days. Dumping the skipper, Michael Hooper, was the most memorable example of his “deep understanding of the Australian game”.
Jones came and went to Japan in the blink of an eye, taking union as a headline sport with him. Joe Schmidt, the former Ireland coach and the expert eye the All Blacks hired to help what was a floundering Ian Foster regime make the 2023 World Cup final, is now in place. The early wins against weak opposition have given way to defeats against the greatest team in the world and an Argentina side that revelled in the passive defensive alignment of the Wallabies.
When your team has four Tests against the combined might of South Africa and New Zealand, judgment based purely on results is a cruel and rather idiotic manner in which a management board should go about its business.
Schmidt needs time. He doesn’t “instinctively understand the Australian way of playing rugby”.
What will Rugby Australia do if the All Blacks maintain the same intensity that took them within sight of victories in Johannesburg and Cape Town? As rugby league soars over the horizon with its dizzying running lines, precise passing and sheer athletic excellence, union fades further from the forefront of Australian sporting minds.
Australia is extremely good at winning, as the Olympics reminded us, but, like many a great competitor, it isn’t so good at losing. Maybe that was the overriding problem with Rugby Australia; it became scared of thinking ahead into the future at the immediate cost of results.
Rennie was travelling in the right direction. Jones had endured consecutive Six Nations campaigns at a 40 per cent strike rate, but without signs of a developing unit. So here we are, with a British & Irish Lions tour down under in less than a year. The stadiums will be full. The travelling contingent will pack the venues, but if the result is a whitewash – and who cannot envisage such a scenario? – the damage before the 2027 World Cup could be irrevocable.
Next year and 2027 should be opportunities for Australian rugby union to fight back against the dominance of league but the opportunity could equally evolve into a threat, with national hurt combining with humiliation to send union towards a minority sport at best and oblivion at worst.
New Zealand and South Africa’s plan to tour each other in 2026 and 2030 is a go-alone statement that signals a one-fingered salute to their ailing union ally.
Australia will have to beg for Bledisloe Cup games. And then, if they are consistently clobbered, where then for the code?
Had Rugby Australia concentrated on performance and not results in 2022, this crisis might have been averted. Its independent board is steering union towards an Australian abyss. Schmidt needs short-term results and long-term progress. He knows the two do not work in tandem. People don’t like bad news, even if it delivers slow progress. And Australia do not have the luxury of time.
The Times
More Coverage
‘We’re believers, not losers’: meet the fans of the world’s worst team
San Marino’s 12th man came from far and wide to watch first win in 20 years. Now, they want more.
Middle-class fans like me loathe celebrity cult, but rugby needs it
There is a battle for the soul of rugby union. There’s the conservative, middle-aged core and then there’s the 15 to 30 age bracket.