Official Alan Jones thread
Castle’s welcome mat was stained from the very beginning
Rugby Australia CEO Raelene Castle. Picture: AAP
Rugby Australia CEO Raelene Castle. Picture: AAP
ALAN JONES
The Australian12:00AM May 25, 2018
Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Share on email
Share more...
177 Comments
Last week I wrote about the need to address the crisis in Australian rugby by calling a “summit” of the best minds.
Beside my piece was a published article by Raelene Castle, the CEO of Rugby Australia. I thought today I should address both those issues.
In relation to Castle, I note a story this week by the respected sports writer, rugby league writer and former coach, Roy Masters in which he said, “NRL officials are unhappy that Raelene Castle escaped scrutiny over the Bulldogs’ salary cap mess”.
As I’ve said previously, if the board of Rugby Australia did no due diligence on Raelene Castle and by that I mean if they made no contact with the Canterbury Rugby League Club, before appointing her, then they have betrayed our game.
In her piece last week, Raelene Castle said she’d been in office for four months and she’d been welcomed by the rugby community.
READ MORE
Brumbies dire warning to fansWAYNE SMITH
Reds calls made to look foolishWAYNE SMITH
I’m not sure where she’s been but she would not be welcome at grassroots, the clubs or the schools as she’s done nothing to help them.
And I was interested to note that in the press conference yesterday in relation to James Slipper and his personal problems, Raelene Castle admitted she hadn’t spoken to him.
An “issue” worthy of calling a press conference about a senior player to whom she hasn’t spoken!
Last week she claimed improved participation growth rates.
Of course it all depends who collects the data.
It was only 12 months ago that a Roy Morgan study reported a 63 per cent decline in Rugby participation since 2001.
So forgive me when stats are thrown around about our game. There are stats on everything. Even when the Titanic was going down, they were counting deckchairs.
What we should know from the Australian Sports Commission’s most recently published stats in 2016 is that 14.7 per cent of Aussie kids play soccer; 8 per cent play AFL; 2.8 per cent play Rugby League and 1.2 per cent play Rugby Union.
What is being done to reverse this participation catastrophe?
I don’t know who wrote this piece for Raelene Castle but she didn’t even know her own policy. She argued the “size for age” policy was for eight to 13-year-olds. It’s actually 10 to 15-year-olds.
But it’s not the simplest way of dealing with the problem.
When I went to school, we played according to weights. There was a 7 stone 7 competition, an 8 stone 7 competition, a 9 stone 7 competition and then open rugby.
Those who were under 7 stone 7 played in the competition, no matter their age.
Such a policy would address, for example, the issue of bigger Polynesian boys who would, in such a system, play according to their weight, not their age.
This was addressed in New Zealand many years ago. We’re playing catch-up and even then the policy needs refining. But will such a policy placate the mums who are worried about concussion? When you have commentators of the game on television telling us that the Waratahs or the Reds “can win tonight if they win the collision,” what mother is going to admit her son to such a game?
In rugby we should be coached to run into space, not into people. With the current “pick and drive” mentality, one shouldn’t be surprised at a very recent Rugby study by Dr Izzy Moore in the British Journal of Sports Medicine showing two staggering details: the first is there will be a concussion in almost every match, one concussion every 1.3 matches; and the second conclusion was that after a concussion, players are 38 per cent more likely to sustain injuries to ankles, knees and shoulders et cetera. This is a huge challenge for our code. Those who say they’re running the game have no public response to these disturbing statistics. Raelene Castle wrote about the national schools strategy run by Paul McLean.
Paul was one of our greatest ever players, an ornament to Queensland and Australian rugby.
But the so-called “strategy” is not fair dinkum. Rugby Australia has to take control of the pathways for our 16 to 20-year-olds. Schoolboy rugby should be a huge part of this. There are a lot of NRL clubs who are putting their talented players into rugby schools. They’re doing this because the rugby schools are investing in coaching and conditioning and most importantly, their cultures produce quality people.
If Rugby Australia were more proactive in developing talent, they should be targeting these good rugby league kids to keep playing rugby union.
Our current pathways are a shambles and if you speak to the parents of our kids, they’ll tell you that Rugby Australia have cut programs like the Junior Gold program and our kids find it easier to progress in rugby league because their pathways are clearer and more consistent.
Some of our best schoolboys are voting with their feet and will continue to do so, regardless of whatever Paul McLean does.
Then Raelene Castle dropped in the World Cup in 2027. I nearly fainted. Let’s hope the game is still relevant in this country by then. I’m not sure she’ll be around if and when we get the World Cup.
It is immensely disturbing to rugby fans that Raelene Castle was, in part at least, the architect of the Canterbury Bulldogs ridiculous back-ended contract policy. Her involvement in this shows that she’s either naïve in contractual matters or what would be worse, doesn’t care about the mess she leaves behind.
Can we trust Raelene Castle to build a World Cup treasure chest like John O’Neill did? So far after 120 days she’s rubber-stamped a size-for-age program that was already on the slate. She attended the launch of Super W or women’s rugby but forgot that she might have to pay the women for their time, but this project was already on the slate. The only thing she’s done is to deal with the Israel Folau issue, which she claimed was the toughest thing she’s ever done. Raelene, are you serious? I’ll tell you something.
Life’s about to get a lot more challenging. Have you re-signed Israel Folau? And if you can’t retain one of the greatest players in the world, I think you’ll find life even more uncomfortable. Come on, Raelene, we need a strong, proactive leader with ideas and a capacity to sell them and implement them. The drums are beating.
I suggested last Friday a Rugby summit. Last Tuesday Rod Kafer announced such a summit to design “the player of the future”. Well I’m glad Kafer has found an idea because he’s been in the job for almost 12 months.
When he got the job they said, “He will supervise an elite coaching development program aimed at improving the capabilities of Australia’s top coaches with the intention of generating winning teams at Test and Super levels”.
Things haven’t really gone to plan. In almost a year in the job, we’ve beaten the Kiwis once in Super Rugby. What has Rod Kafer been doing with the Super Rugby coaches? But now he’s going to lead a coaching summit to design “the player of the future”.
And all the notable coaches in Australia are going to hold hands while apparently Rod Kafer directs the rugby traffic.
Rod Kafer is not qualified to lead a coaching summit. His total coaching experience lasted one season and he was a failure. The Shore School in Sydney with a magnificent rugby tradition recently announced that Rod Kafer would be assisting their rugby program in 2018. Not sure what he’s been doing but in the last two weeks Shore’s First XV have been hammered 82-0 by St Joseph’s College and 73-0 by Barker College. His track record at Saracens in England and at Sydney’s Shore School would suggest he’s the wrong man for the job.
All this stuff about players of the future! The players of the future are here in front of us. Our problem is not a problem of talent. They certainly don’t need Rod Kafer’s questionable coaching input. Our players need experienced and successful coaches, not rookies. We basically have the same playing pool which won the Super Rugby championship in 2011 and 2014.
Our players are good enough. They need quality coaches and good man managers. For example, Quade Cooper is like Cristiano Ronaldo — both may be high maintenance but surely a good coach would get the best out of them.
Australian rugby has a coaching problem. We cannot return to the top of the world by persisting with “pick and drive” rugby.
We were told the skill issue would be resolved when Mick Byrne, the All Blacks’ skills coach, arrived a couple of years ago. I understand Mick Byrne is doing a good job. So there must be a faulty part in the rugby machine somewhere.
One is left with the conclusion to which I have alluded in past weeks. If you don’t know the problem, you have no hope of offering the solution. Nothing coming out of Rugby Australia has yet addressed any of rugby’s appallingly urgent concerns.
Alan Jones is a former Wallabies coach and is host of the Alan Jones Breakfast Show on 2GB and the Macquarie radio network and is host of Jones & Co on Sky News at 8pm on Tuesdays.