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A must read for all
Some highlights from the article below full story here http://www.rugbynews.net.au/a-grassr...trategic-plan/
By Brett Papworth
Back in about 2012, the ARU decided to conduct an audit of the premier clubs in Sydney and Brisbane. I can’t tell you why, but I suspect it was a way for them to justify the reduction in the grants previously given to our clubs. But of course they didn’t tell us that. They just sent the highly paid wise men to tell us what we didn’t have or didn’t do. To justify why we didn’t deserve their financial support any longer, and to be able to tick that box. ...............
..........It was after this meeting I realised the problem in our game. My light bulb moment! My club, and many others, are run by a bunch of really high quality volunteers. Our board is made up of a CEO, a HR director, a senior partner at a major law firm (and former Wallaby), a former school principal, a successful businessman or two, and then me. Are any of them women? Yes, but that shouldn’t be relevant, but it is to the ARU. We are all there because we have a real connection to the place and we care about the success of our club. In Bill Pulver’s opinion, if he gave us money, we would “piss it up against the wall”! He actually said that at a NSWRU board meeting in January.
The ARU board is made up of big end of town corporate high flyers, who are on the board for the benefit of their own CV’s, and who in my opinion couldn’t give a hoot about how many kids play the game in 2035. Western Australia, through Geoff Stooke, gets as much focus and funding as NSW or Queensland, which is simply crazy when you consider that the latter two make up a good proportion of the game at all levels, and are what you might call rugby heartlands............
.....We now have Junior Gold programmes, and an under 20s competition that takes the best youngsters out of the club system, and creates an elitist group who are told by the endless list of paid development coaches how special they are. Because they believe no one can develop a young player quite like they can. It is just rubbish, and creates a culture of elite teens, who frankly couldn’t make first grade, and often think they don’t need to. We are spending huge money on the wrong things!
For example, the norm these days is that if you want to win an under 16s game of rugby, you simply pick the biggest blokes. Simplistic, I know, but that is what happens. A coach gets a job, gets ambitious, needs to win (for his benefit, not the kids), so he selects the biggest boppers he can find, because 90% of the time they will win. The smaller lad who may develop in his twenties misses out, and once you have missed out, it requires an admission of error by the paid development coach for you to ever get back in, and those admissions are very rare.
What makes it worse is that we know with some certainty that our best players are more mature players, often approaching 30. The best in the world in both rugby codes are over 30, yet we spend millions on empires trying to find the genius 18-year old. Not because it has any benefit, but because it’s someone’s job to perpetuate this myth.
Most senior clubs have coaches who would run rings around these paid servants of the game, and who develop not only the playing abilities of 150 young men, but also a culture whereby these young blokes don’t get ahead of themselves. Most of the paid development empire couldn’t survive in the club world, because you actually have to win something, and be accountable. Much easier to fill in a spreadsheet showing the training habits of 17-year olds, and arrange meaningless matches where the result doesn’t matter.
The fact is that our best players ultimately find their way to the top, regardless of how much money is wasted on the “pathway” system. Why? Because they have a different mindset to those who almost get there. They know they are talented, but they work harder, and do the things required without being told to. They don’t need a paid development coach to tell them to get to the gym or the track, they are already there! It is the way the world works. ................