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- by: Wayne Smith
- From:The Australian
- October 13, 201212:00AM
OK, now let's get Australian rugby moving again.
My opinion of the outgoing chief executive of the Australian Rugby Union and the job he has done in recent years has been on the public record for some time, so nothing now needs to be added.
His carefully cultivated friends in the media can safely be left to pen their paeans, which frees up everyone else to consider the marvellous opportunities now opening up.
The most important issue by far confronting the game in Australia today is its division and disunity. Specifically, the gulf between the ARU and the states has never been wider, the relationships between the national body and the Super Rugby franchises more strained. It is crippling the game, shrinking it, at a time when the AFL and NRL are bounding ahead.
ARU chairman Michael Hawker, increasingly cutting a decisive, courageous figure, would know this better than anyone, having spent his first few months in office getting feedback from the Super Rugby franchises. He would know that their dealings with the ARU have left them all feeling frustrated and essentially powerless.
Of all the many gobsmacking statements made yesterday, perhaps the one suggesting the ARU has nothing to do with Australia's Super Rugby teams was the most staggering. Certainly, it would have come as dramatic news to the franchises themselves.
So, taking the man at his word, it's clear the ARU's first action must be to return control of the rugby academies to the states. Of the many unfathomable decisions the ARU has taken in recent times, arguably the most perplexing and divisive was the one to centralise the training and development of the young players on the brink of playing Super Rugby into two squads - one in Sydney, the other in Brisbane.
Previously, young academy members trained alongside the men already playing professional rugby for the Waratahs, Reds, Brumbies, Western Force and Rebels. Suddenly, for reasons that made little sense, they found themselves training against fellow academy players no older or more experienced than themselves, cut off from the teams that at some point would be requiring their services.
And, when ultimately they were called up to join one of the five teams, they went in not knowing the calls or the patterns of play or their new coach or the bulk of their new teammates. Madness.
Now is the time to undo it, and if high-performance boss David Nucifora has a problem with that, he should feel free to follow his boss's lead. One can only hope if he does decide to step off the cliff, that he has his own high-paying Echo Entertainment parachute to soften his landing. Time, too, for the ARU to finally act to revive a third-tier competition. The Australian Rugby Championship set up by Gary Flowers should never have been killed off in the first place and the rationale given at the time - that it cost too much to run - ignored the fact that drastic cutbacks already were being undertaken at the time the ARU pulled the pin.
Every time rugby fans turn on Fox Sports, they are reminded of the fact that New Zealand is building on its already substantial lead over Australia by preparing its next generation of All Blacks in the ITM Cup. That Australia had a comparable competition and, of its own accord, scuttled it after only one season - a season universally hailed as a huge success - borders on madness. Time to right that astonishing wrong. Perhaps the reborn competition could be called the Flowers Bowl. After all, he alone had the vision and boldness to act when everyone else was dithering and what a tragedy that his reward was to be cut off at the knees. And that's another thing that flows from yesterday. The myth-making ends. Now the real history of Australian rugby can be written. Importantly, there's money in the pipeline to fund the ARC Mark II. New Zealand made $24 million out of the 2005 British Lions tour there so there will a number north of that, hopefully way north, to help establish a third-tier competition after the best of Britain and Ireland tour Australia next year.
And this time all the politics has to be put aside.
Yet while the ARU works its way down through the layers - and, who knows, if Australian rugby gets really lucky it could even decide to play a meaningful role at grassroots level - it also needs to turn its attention to the top tier, the Wallabies.
Yes, as Robbie Deans's cheerleaders never tire of telling us, the Wallabies did finish second in the Rugby Championship, the news trumpeted as though Australians should be delighted that we were good enough to finish a distant second to the All Blacks.
But back in the real world, everyone else recognises that Australian rugby fans are disengaging. While they applaud the Wallabies' character and courage, they want more. Granted, they were given a tantalising glimpse of what they're seeking when Australia magnificently worked a first-phase set-piece move for Digby Ioane to score in Rosario, but they want to see that against the All Blacks, not just the Pumas. And they want to see a higher level of skills than currently on display.
Deans can still be the man to deliver all this, but he would have been acutely aware yesterday that his one guaranteed ally at St Leonards won't be in place much longer. Every professional football coach the world over would know that when the chief executive who hired him departs, all bets are off from that point.
A lot, of course, will depend on who the ARU chooses as its new CEO. The two frontrunners are former Brumbies captain and ARU high-performance boss Brett Robinson and Jim Carmichael, the innovative chief executive who has turned around the business of the Queensland Reds. Either would be an exceptional choice but that's not to say the global headhunt won't find someone even better.
Yesterday was a momentous, melodious day in the history of Australian rugby. After being stuck for years on the same discordant note, listening to the same discordant screech, played by the same tone-deaf orchestra, the music at last has changed.
It was with this day in mind that the Melbourne Rebels chose their battle anthem: "Do you hear the people sing, singing the song of angry men? It's the music of a people who will not be slaves again!"
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/spor...-1226494737419
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Originally Posted by sandgroperrugby
