The Wallabies are out of the World Cup at the pools stages for the first time ever and I’m gutted.
I’ll be writing a detailed piece sharing why this happened soon.
But before I do, I wanted to share my high-level thoughts with you and hear what you think.
Problem 1 - Changing Coaches
With the benefit of hindsight, RA should have stayed with Dave Rennie for this year.
Eddie is clearly burned out after being sacked from England, and 3 years of preparation by Rennie was wasted.
Eddie should have taken a year off to refresh, and if Rennie didn’t go well, taken over as Wallabies coach from 2024 onwards (like what NZ has done with Razor Robinson and Ian Foster).
But it’s an absolute almighty cluster fuck and someone needs to accept responsibility for this decision.
Especially if RA Chairman Hamish McLennan made a “captain’s call” and overruled the RA board to bring Eddie back.
PS: If I’m right about Eddie being burned out, he should have had the self-awareness to realise it, and not signed for this year.
Problem 2 - The real problem
Australian Rugby is stuck in a downward spiral that looks like this:
Contrast it to the cycle AFL is in:
And the reason for this is AFL is a game tailored to the Australian market.
Whereas Rugby has a global governing body that does not makes decisions about the game just to suit Australian fans.
This is the real issue I will dig deeper on when my emotions settle.
But I also think Eddie was brought back because someone at RA believed he was the one to snap us out of that cycle, and that it would have only continued under Rennie (albeit much slower).
Not sure if the above makes sense, but I’m very keen to hear what you think.
But please don’t give solutions yet, because as Albert Einstein once said:
“If I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.”
So if you care about Rugby, let’s stay focused on the problem for a while before suggesting solutions.
Totally agree with your thoughts. I was pretty disappointed Dave Rennie was sacked on a whim. Eddie's approach of a 'smash and grab' world cup was always risky and a long shot.
We need more people watching the game through free-to-air TV to bring in more funding, but that takes time to build. In fact, it will take a long time to slow the decline and turn around. Until those at the top realise it will get worse before it gets better and there is no magic sacking or signing that will 'fix' things, we will continue our decline.
We were at the game. The players body language did not look good at the start of the second half. I know absolutely nothing about elite sport but from an organisation view there is something really wrong.