The Wallabies’ loss in Santa Fe was humiliating and, sadly, unsurprising
It’s bad enough some members of the current Wallabies squad weren’t alive when Australia last won the Bledisloe Cup. It’s even worse to think they won’t be alive when they next hold it.
It’s embarrassing enough that some members of the current Wallabies squad weren’t alive when Australia last won the Bledisloe Cup. It’s even worse to think on current form, they won’t be alive when they next hold it.
A once-proud rugby nation, now struggling to get within 40 points of Argentina. Memories of Little, Horan, Campese and Eales becoming more distant and more frustrating with every missed tackle and bone-headed decision.
The loss in Santa Fe was humiliating. Embarrassing. Humbling. Disgraceful. Shameful.
And, sadly, unsurprising.
But could it also be game changing? Could it be the moment Rugby Australia takes a damn good look at itself in the mirror? Could it be rugby’s Montreal Olympics, when Australia came home with no gold medals in 1976 and resolved to do anything it took to become one of the world’s sporting heavyweights.
I doubt it.
For that to happen, you need everyone on board. You need to start at school and club level, bring in whatever shambolic Super Rugby concept is in vogue and, from the look of it, have leaders in Rugby Australia who don’t appear, for want of a better expression, complete muppets.
You need fans to want to go to matches. Which means winning those matches more often than not. Only the diehard turn up every week to watch the same dross. And there is a hell of a lot of dross being played in Australia these days – at every level.
Winning teams will encourage the kids to give rugby a go. At the moment, it’s the country’s ninth most popular sport. Rugby officials will moan about those nasty league officials stealing all the good players, but more people play badminton, for goodness sake. That’s not even a proper sport – it’s tennis with feathers.
Show everyone how good the game is without it costing them an arm and a leg to stand in the rain and eat over-priced, under-cooked food.
And what’s happening in the schools? Watching the Wallabies at the World Cup in France suggested hardly any of them had been taught the core skills by anyone who knew what they were talking about.
Raw talent gets you only so far – and even less far at Test level. It was beyond embarrassing – not helped by Eddie Jones’s bizarre selections and shit-eating grin every time the camera turned to him in the stands.
They lost 40-6 to Wales. Seriously? Wales can’t beat an egg these days. If you lose by 34 points to Wales, what are the British and Irish Lions going to do to you next year? A 3-0 Lions series win must be about $1.02 in betting markets.
You also need patience. Getting rid of the maddening, delusional Jones is a start, but things aren’t going to change overnight – as the Santa Fe debacle proves. Joe Schmidt is a proven international coach, but he’ll need time. Either time to turn the Wallabies into a world power again, or time to realise that he’s got better things to do on his Saturdays than putting lipstick on a pig.
The other school of thought is the Wallabies aren’t rubbish. They’re simply as average as they used to be before the freakish 1990s – when a world-class XV dominated all before them. That is, obviously, rubbish, but I thought I’d throw it out there.
The worst mistake the powers-that-be can make is to think the Argentina result is an anomaly. A one-off that won’t happen again.
It wasn’t. It was the result of 20-plus years of treating rugby in Australia like a second-class sport. And if Argentina can do that to the Wallabies, how many points will an on-fire All Blacks team rack up one day? Eighty?
Maybe then, somebody important and reasonably intelligent at Rugby Australia will start trying to fix things.
World rugby needs Australia at the top table. Not under the table, bumping its head on chair legs as it looks for crumbs.
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