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Thread: Bledisloe Cup failure shows outdated private school system letting Wallabies down

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    Legend Contributor Alison's Avatar
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    Bledisloe Cup failure shows outdated private school system letting Wallabies down

    It's rare, very rare, that I agree with anything written on the Rugby Heaven pages of the SMH but the guy who wrote this piece could have read my mind (except for the final para!). Throw in the completely invisible marketing and advertising campaign (except, maybe, in NSW) and it's not hard to see why union is struggling big time in Australia :



    "The post-Bledisloe analysis of recent Wallabies woes has been extensive; worthy in some quarters, hysterical in others. Yet none of it has delved deeply enough into the roots of Australian rugby's woes, which go well beyond coaching and selection at the top level.

    It goes beyond clubs, as well, which is what most refer to when talking about the "grassroots" of the game. The elephant in the room is a system of talent production based on elite schools, a model which has proven to be outdated and largely incapable of feeding the needs of the Wallaby machine.This is emotional stuff for many in the game and even those in the media, plenty of whom have ties to their former halls of education and recall their battles on the field with understandable fondness. But the rose glasses blur a flawed system that now sees rugby as the only mainstream Australian sport that relies on schools, rather than clubs, to deliver its next generation of stars.

    It's hardly an indictment of the schools themselves. The boys under their care could scarcely want for better coaching or facilities. Nor should it be interpreted as a class argument, although despite the ARU assuring fans it was expanding its reach beyond the cloisters, the XV-a-side game appears to be as exclusive as ever.

    What should concern rugby fans and its governing body is the enormous amount of talent being snapped up by rugby league and AFL with virtually no competition.

    Of course, both sports are played widely in schools but any serious talents have years of club football behind them well before they hit high school. Meanwhile, club rugby has continued to bleed numbers, struggles for funding and leading voices, like Brett Papworth, are engaged running warfare with the governing body.

    The fix won't be easy and would require an enormous cultural shift as well as some heavy finance and sharp-minded prime movers in the right places. School rugby occupies such a sacred place among its constituents that the various First XV seasons are given slick, Hollywood-style previews that wouldn't look out of place amid the significantly brighter lights of US college football.

    The evolution of the sport in Australia has seen those schools become the prime talent incubator for Super Rugby and beyond. Yet Australian Schools Rugby has no direct governance ties to the ARU, while the predominantly metropolitan locales have managed to alienate most of the regional and rural areas that have gifted some of the very best players to the rival winter codes.

    That's not even scratching the surface of Australian rugby's startling inability to attract any Indigenous talent, when rugby league and AFL can offer up a host of Indigenous players among their modern greats. None of this is new stuff but the pace of change has been alarmingly glacial.

    Those high up in the ARU know the urgency of the scenario but only need to look at the latest Wallaby match-day squad to realise the vast amount of work that must be done to broaden the game. Of the 23 players, only six were from state schools, one of those being Israel Folau who played league at the time.

    And only two players were from areas outside of capital cities, with Kane Douglas (Maclean) and Adam Ashley-Cooper (Central Coast) giving the group at least some semblance of a regional flavour.

    Reece Hodge was one of the feel-good stories as a genuine club product but, alas, his story appears to be the exception and not the rule. Back in 2012, he was one of just three players outside of the GPS system to be part of that year's Australian Schoolboys squad.

    Four years later, the same squad has ... wait for it ... three players from non-traditional rugby schools. One of those is from Pakenham in Victoria, one from Erindale College in Canberra and the other from Keebra Park on the Gold Coast, the rugby league school that played Sevens for fun back in 2010 and cut a swathe through rugby's finest.

    Clubs are the logical way in to the pathway system for the overwhelming majority of rugby players not in the right school but those in the bush, in particular, are struggling to stay afloat, let alone unearth rugby's version of Johnathan Thurston.

    Given that only 35 per cent of Australian students attend independent schools and that a much smaller percentage of those schools do the heavy lifting in terms of elite rugby programs, perhaps the narrative around the Wallabies should be that they are punching above their weight, rather than failing to live up to expectations."



    Related link:

    http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-union/au...04-gr88x9.html

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    Legend Contributor brokendown gunfighter's Avatar
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    This senario has been obvious to many of us for years.Australian rugby has been based on an so
    called privileged private school upbringing to bring players through the system.what a croc of shit.the ARU have only themselves to blame for this

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    Immortal Contributor shasta's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by brokendown gunfighter View Post
    This senario has been obvious to many of us for years.Australian rugby has been based on an so
    called privileged private school upbringing to bring players through the system.what a croc of shit.the ARU have only themselves to blame for this
    It's not entirely accurate though. The real elephant in the room is AFL. They have invested many millions over a long period courting the kids of NSW & Qld. They have paid for goal posts in schools all over the place and provide legions of development officers.
    The Mungos have ruined junior footy by concentrating on sports high schools and elite squad development programs and competitions. That, together with switching to age divisions rather than weight/age, plus the changes in how the game is played has seen many kids give up. This is insane as many of those later developing kids turn out to be the highly skilled key position players. They have also seriously ignored country footy. It's in deep trouble.

    I remember being lambasted around these parts for agreeing with thes two blokes about a decade ago. But I still rekon they were on to something. Particularly re funding joint development officers

    http://www.thefanatics.com/sports.news.view.php?id=470301

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    Last edited by shasta; 05-09-16 at 18:46.

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    Legend Contributor Alison's Avatar
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    At best, the ARU has been snoring at the wheel; at worst, it's been derelict in its duty. At a time when Australia's population has grown exponentially, they have done very little to grow the game, except perhaps to resurrect the NRC. Although even that has been half-hearted. I'd give Bill Pulver a C- on his end of term report card!

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