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By David Riccio and Jamie Pandaram The Sunday Telegraph September 23, 2012 2:36PM
Former Wallabies captain Andrew Slack says injuries are no excuse for Australia's poor performances
"Excuses are for wimps." These four words from former Wallabies captain Andrew Slack point to the malaise eating Australian rugby - and he says it all starts at the top.
When ARU chief executive John O'Neill started to use injuries as an excuse for Australia's Rugby Championship struggles, Slack had heard enough of the spin.
"He told us 24 players were unavailable for Wallabies selection. I'm wondering if that includes 65-year-old hardman Stan Pilecki, who had a nasty occurrence of gout earlier in the decade," Slack said.
"International sport is an excuses-free zone. You can be lucky, you can be unlucky, but excuses are for wimps."
With Australian teams performing below-par at Super Rugby level, the Wallabies failing to prise the Bledisloe Cup from Kiwi hands again and now a gruelling road trip, the time for excuses is way past over.
Sure, Australia have lost captains James Horwill, David Pocock and Will Genia - all key players - to season-ending injuries.
Star five-eighth Quade Cooper and match-winner James O'Connor have also been sidelined.
In total, Australia have 15 players sidelined but, as Slack points out, good teams can overcome adversity.
After losing the Bledisloe series for a 10th straight year - and even struggling to beat Argentina at home - the message should be that we have to lift our game.
Instead O'Neill said: "Name a team that has lost three captains and the X-factor players that were such a formidable part of our renaissance last year."
While you can't hide from the fact that Australia have been hit hard, the bigger issue is why isn't there the depth to cover the injuries.
Slack says O'Neill only has to look at our trans-Tasman cousins as an example.
"I can name you an All Blacks team that lost an X-factor kind of player in Dan Carter and his immediate No. 10 back-up during last year's World Cup, but still managed to nab the prize," Slack writes in his column for The Sunday Mail in Queensland.
"As for the 'renaissance' O'Neill referred to, I'm not sure Michelangelo would be thrilled at any thought the Wallabies' efforts in 2011 and his dabblings in the Sistine Chapel are going to live side by side down the ages.
"The Tri-Nations win and the outstanding victory over the All Blacks were commendable but, despite O'Neill's overly generous pass mark for Australia's World Cup campaign, the code's biggest occasion was more noteworthy for a near complete absence of Wallaby highlights."
Besieged Wallabies coach Robbie Deans didn't escape, either, with Slack insisting he made a tactical blunder by publicly announcing the All Blacks were too good for us.
However, World Cup-winning coach Bob Dwyer said the ARU should seek advice from those who have guided the Wallabies to World Cup victory in a bid to reignite the code.
"We have two former World Cup-winning coaches [Dwyer and Rod Macqueen] and two World Cup-winning captains [Nick Farr-Jones and John Eales]; the ARU might have spoken to Eales but the four of us have never been part of a discussion together," Dwyer said
"That might be a starting point."
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it all comes back to not having that third tier competition to identify and develop talent