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A new school of thought
August 24, 2007
WHEN the Wallabies ran out on to Concord Oval to play France in the World Cup semi-final in 1987, the overwhelming majority of players came from a narrow band of GPS or Catholic high schools, a reflection of the reach of the game in Australian society.
Yesterday, when the 2007 Wallabies flew out to challenge for the sixth World Cup - a decade after the winds of professionalism howled through the game - the make-up of the team remains largely unchanged.
In 1987, only five of the 21 Wallabies sunk by Serge Blanco's last-minute try - David Campese, Brett Papworth, Peter Grigg, Enrique Rodriguez and Andrew Leeds - came from the public school system. Despite the advent of professionalism and cross-code pollination, it is likely only only four or five of this year's Wallabies starting 22 - probably Chris Latham, Wycliff Palu, Lote Tuqiri and George Smith - will be from government schools. Other squad members from outside the private school system are Adam Ashley-Cooper, Mark Gerrard and David Lyons, making a total of seven from 30 players.
Brisbane's Nudgee College, with Rocky Elsom, Hugh McMeniman and Sean Hardman, has the most representatives in the squad, followed by Shore (Phil Waugh and Al Baxter) and St Edmund's College, ACT, (Matt Giteau and George Gregan).
Papworth, a student at Epping Boys High and now a commentator and player manager, says rugby remains a game dominated by a narrow band that runs about five kilometres around the city. He says rugby's hierarchy appears to believe they can cherry-pick players and still maintain strong Wallabies and Waratahs sides.
"I think the challenge for rugby is if they're going to battle for that top talent, they have to be in those state schools - and Catholic schools, for that matter - in those rugby league-dominated areas," Papworth said.
"We've got competition in this country no one else has, and the battle for the top-shelf 15-year-olds is the real battle - and I'm not sure rugby's winning it. I can tell you they're probably not, because they're not even in most of those areas."
While overall player numbers have risen significantly in the past 20 years, there are signs that the traditional base is less solid.
Brother Bob Wallace, president of the Australian Rugby Football Schools Union, says there has been an influx of players with a Pacific Island background, and growth in states such as Western Australia. "But it has diminished in the traditional private schools, who might have had five or six rugby teams in an age group and now might only have three or four," he said.
ARU chief executive John O'Neill says: "You have to be obsessed with growing the game, because you're going to end up throwing up more talent."
Two world cups out of five suggest a robust production line. But there are challenges, O'Neill admits, even in the upper echelon of private schools.
"AFL has been knocking for a while - and spending a truckload of money - with not a lot of success, and I don't see rugby league getting a foothold in the competitions we're talking about," he says. "Football is a different story. They only started in the late '80s and in some [GPS] schools [now], there are more football teams than rugby teams."
In Queensland, says Andrew Slack, who captained the 1987 Wallabies, AFL has grown enormously. "There have been lots of blues between parents and old boys and, for want of a better word, blow-in [school] principals from the south, about adding AFL," he says.
Young elite athletes have more options and greater financial rewards available than ever before. "Years ago, it was only the Craig Johnstons who made money out of soccer, AFL wasn't a pot of gold and league gave you a bit. Now you've got four alternatives, so the pool will necessarily shrink," Slack says.
The next generation looks likely to be a repeat of the past 20 years. Only six of the 23 Australian Schoolboys who beat England this week are from government schools, four of those from the new generation of specialist sports high schools.
On the other side of one of the great remaining class divides in Australian society, Tim Mannah and Joel Brown chalked up a first for rugby league, becoming the first players from NSW independent schools to make the Australian Schoolboys.
Bruce Wallace, the president of the Australian Schoolboys Rugby League, says league is getting a toehold in quarters from which it was previously barred. "No one wants to take anything away from the rugby schools; we just want to give them the opportunity to participate in both," he said. "And I think a lot of them are realising that, too."
Numbers are important, but they're not the only thing. O'Neill says the Wallabies have always punched above their weight and, facing World Cup rivals with much bigger playing pools, he is hoping they can do so again.
Slack says it is obviously better to have 20 players rather than five - except if the five players contain two named Horan and Eales and the 20 don't.
True, but the challenge for the Wallabies is that the 20 are more likely to have the next Horan and Eales than the five ever will be.
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