Facing up to Sanzaar's failures
It's early days but the RWC23 compass is pointing true north (free)
If it feels gratuitous to lead on Australia’s rugby woes twice in a row, but the reason is twofold: there’s recency bias, given that Eddie Jones would have still been making his way to the post-match press calls as this intro was tapped out; and it’s not being alarmist to say the knock-on effect for rugby in the region could be profound.
It’s hard to put into words just how bereft Australia was in the second half of their 6-40 loss to Wales in Lyon. In the first half they had strung together 15 minutes of connected, coherent rugby falling 0-7 behind early. It really did look like they had worked something out, but when it went wrong it went horribly wrong.
Worse, they had little to no genuine test-rugby know-how, aside from pesky halfback Nic White, to inject from the bench to shore things up.
By the end all you saw was the shattered remnants of a once-proud flagship team that had been able to mask enormous deficiencies in the country’s rugby ecosystem.
The players looked broken; Eddie Jones looked shrivelled.
And that’s about where the schadenfreude should end.
The “Woeful Wallabies” might be a nice headline to snigger at but it speaks to wider Sanzaar problems.
Australian rugby has always been good at doing a lot with a little, but those days are over. The school and club pipeline is not supplying the Super Rugby clubs with enough professional-standard players and that competition is not, to borrow a crass but apt phrase, polishing the turd.
The systemic issues should not shield Jones from warranted criticism, however.
Jones’ “youth” policy looks silly if you’re viewing it through the lens of fielding a competitive team and the world’s biggest rugby tournament; it looks even sillier if the talent is not plump enough to promise anything more than mediocrity in the medium- to long-term.
And it looks downright stupid if the man behind the policy is already casting his eyes to the north.
According to reports from both Japan and Australia, Jones has interviewed for Japan head coach, a position that becomes vacant when Jamie Joseph departs after the World Cup.
Per Tom Decent in the Sydney Morning Herald:
Wallabies boss Eddie Jones was secretly interviewed by Japanese rugby officials to take over as the country’s head coach just days before Australia’s Rugby World Cup campaign started in France.
The Wallabies coach is considering walking away from Australian rugby with four years remaining on his current deal after formal discussions about returning to Japan, the country he coached from 2012 to 2015.
Sources with knowledge of negotiations who are unable to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the discussions told the Herald Jones has applied for the head coaching role with the Brave Blossoms, and took part in an online Zoom interview with JRFU officials on August 25. It was the first formal interview of the process.
Jones declined to respond to the SMH before the critical Wales match, but had earlier described the Japanese reports as “bullshit rumours”.
In the post-match, he gave a fairly intense non-denial denial.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Jones said of the reports. “I’m committed to coaching Australia. I take umbrage at the questioning about my commitment to Australian rugby. To doubt my commitment to the job is red hot.”
There is too much certainty and detail in the reports for them to be summarily dismissed as rumours, in which case it is a truly staggering state of affairs.
Rugby Australia torched three years of Dave Rennie’s work - a plan that at least appeared to follow some logical 2023 squad-building pattern - to go all-in on a guy whose schtick had worn so thin in England that they were happy to pay him out as long as they could wave goodbye.
RA chairman Hamish McLennan was so pleased with his recruiting work he handed Jones the keys through till 2027 despite, it is understood, warnings from many within Australia’s relatively small rugby community that the 63 year old came with significant baggage.
McLennan now has the appearance of the unclothed emperor, while Jones looks increasingly like yesterday’s man. Rennie’s stock, on the other hand, has risen. He might not have presided over the great team, but they always played hard for him - something you cannot accuse this morning’s team of doing for the full 80.
When Australia’s on-field collapse is combined with waning interest from the public, from broadcasters and, as reported on Friday, from outside investors, you are left with a real problem for Super Rugby.
Across at Business Desk, Trevor McKewen last week wrote ($):
[The] travails faced by Rugby Australia are also not good news for NZ, which is increasingly reliant on the code getting its act together in Australia to strengthen rugby in this part of the world at a time when both countries appear to be going backwards on the field.
RA only receives A$33m annually from its Channel Nine and Stan deals, compared to the reported $100m deal NZR did with Sky TV, and if it can’t lift that substantially in 2026, it will not have the dollars needed to recruit and keep young talent and improve high-performance systems…
The [failure to secure a private equity deal] also further clouds the Super Rugby Pacific competition’s future. Had Silver Lake secured RA, Super Rugby would be an asset the Americans could develop jointly with NZR – something the beleaguered competition is crying out for.
RA is taking over the Waratahs and Brumbies franchises under an aspiring centralised model, but its commitment to Super Rugby’s future is still up in the air, with repeated contradictory statements from McLennan.
Super Rugby’s role in the Wallabies decline was exposed by former Wallaby Stephen Hoiles in some pleasingly robust post-match analysis on Stan (via Sky).
He left little room for any other interpretation than Australia was running too many teams - teams they could not supply with enough professional-standard players. Rather than increasing depth, it was watering down the product: in effect an ebb tide lowers all boats.
Something needs to be done. The NRL is a great product and, in Australia at least (and potentially New Zealand if it gets a second franchise) an oval-ball talent Hoover. South Africa is gone and is not coming back. The local broadcast market is tapped out.
To leave this segment, I’ll put you in the hands of a subscriber Lindsay, who wrote:
We have to build a Pacific Rim rugby championship: NZ, Australia, Japan, Drua, Moana Pasifika, Canada, US, Argentina.
It may take us 10-20 years to catch up to the northern hemisphere but we have no choice; we have to re-establish our patch and our style.
The Blues at Gillette Stadium vs the Boston Mystics would be great entertainment.
And having worked in the US for the past 20 years, I assure you there is money available to make this happen.
It’s not the worst idea I’ve heard (though clearly it would come with multiple fish hooks). No, the worst idea would be giving Jones a contract through to 2027.
What should not be lost is just how ruthlessly efficient Warren Gatland’s Wales were, despite being a distant second in a lot of the stats you normally associate with winning - metres gained, defenders beaten et cetera.
New Zealander Gareth Anscombe, who replaced Dan Biggar early, was particularly good, and showed a bit of fortitude after his first act was missing a kick in front, albeit from 40m out. He ended up with 23 points and a try assist.
Where has the north’s progress come from? Undoubtedly from the Six Nations, which is far superior to the Rugby Championship, as well as the domestic European competitions which produce a varied game across all types of conditions in front of big crowds and with the intensity to match…
Occasional New Zealand derby matches apart, the game is no longer intense enough to be true test-match preparation and part of the problem is that virtually every Kiwi and Aussie team plays the same way…
New Zealand has traditionally been seen as an isolated breeding ground of rugby intelligence and skill but now that the rest of the world has caught up that isolation may now be starting to drag the All Blacks down.
***
The other massive match of the round that had ramifications for the short-term future of the All Blacks was Ireland’s narrow 13-8 victory over the Springboks.
Without wanting to be the Grinch That Stole Rugby, too much has been made of this game, both in terms of quality and the consequences of it.
One man’s offal is another’s pâté, so it is pointless trying to tell people what they should like and what they shouldn’t, but the idea that both teams reached peak rugby is unconvincing.
The game I watched was a high-energy, pulsating match. It was played in a cauldron, which gave it a certain passion fébrile but it was limited in scope. As a neutral it was a good watch; a spark to a spluttering tournament.
It was much more than that, apparently. Wrote Robert Kitson in The Guardian:
Some sporting occasions continue to reverberate long after the final whistle. Ireland’s 13-8 win against South Africa definitely falls into that category, for a host of reasons. As well as being a great game that qualified instantly as a modern classic, it was also a match that has blown the Rugby World Cup wide open.
It didn’t look like a game that South Africa was that upset at losing and with the quarter-finals emerging from pools A and B both earmarked as barnstormers from a long way out, has it really “blown the RWC wide open”?
The draw itself blew this World Cup open, and the key pool games in Pool A and B were merely tasty entrées.
What Ireland have gained from victory is belief that they can beat the Boks (especially if they have an off day with the boot) and, most likely, they have avoided the home team in the quarter-final. What remains the same is that they face a potentially difficult quarter-final en route to what they hope will be a first visit to the semifinals.
It was a game that defied all attempts to pigeonhole this Rugby World Cup as a “kicking” tournament, or a “set-piece” Rugby World Cup.
There is a narrative – emerging largely from New Zealand, it has to be said – that the teams with natural brilliance are somehow being stifled by the current state of the game, which unduly rewards those who kick the ball 1000 times a game.
It’s rubbish. Ireland and South Africa were ferocious, ambitious and highly skilled all at the same time. The losers of this World Cup will be losers because they aren’t good enough, not because the officiating or the laws aren’t conducive to the way they want to play.
The key plank of this argument seems to be a mutual exclusivity that I’m not convinced exists. It is entirely possible to lose this World Cup because you’re both not good enough and because the officiating and interpretation of the laws aren’t conducive to the way you want to play.
That might have been the best game of the tournament - though Wales v Fiji was pretty good and, particularly if you’re French, the opener had more than its share of moments, too - but in no way should an excellent, muscular match between two rugby heavyweights dismiss legitimate concerns about the amount of kicking, mauling and lack of ball-in-hand ambition in modern test-match rugby. Not if you want rugby to appeal to anyone other than the diehard fan, that is.
As for the downstream effect, NZ Herald’s Liam Napier thinks it spells bad news ($).
All roads… seemingly lead to Ian Foster’s men confronting the world-leading nation in a quarter-final. That’s not good news for the All Blacks. In my mind, the Springboks were always the All Blacks’ [preferred] opponent…
On the whole, the All Blacks boast a strong recent history of rising to the occasion against the Boks. This is not true of Ireland, who with four wins from their last six tests against the All Blacks, appear to have their number…
Much of the All Blacks’ game relies on generating lightning quick ball. When they harness go forward through their forward pack, as they did throughout the truncated Rugby Championship, the All Blacks dictate terms. When they don’t, they are vulnerable. Ireland’s ability to smother, suffocate, frustrate the All Blacks at the source evokes major concerns for a potential sudden death showdown.
Quite possibly, though it should be noted that this All Black team is more than capable of losing to both.
Hemlock or nightshade? Pick your poison.
SHORTS
There was a lot more sport to digest over the weekend, some of which we’ll dig into later in the week, including:
The Warriors season comes crashing down in a blizzard of Brisbane offloads, quick rucks and forward passes, but at least they are talking about extending coach Andrew Webster beyond 2025:
“What he has done with the team is something that deserves reward,” [owner Mark] Robinson said. “He is very different from a lot of people... I’ve never heard him say a negative thing about anyone.
“We’ve had some discussions already, but we said we will talk about his future after the season. It will be him and me sitting down, he doesn’t have a manager, and I like to talk like that. We will sort something out that sees him here for the long term.”
The inexplicably poor performance from the Silver Ferns, who are paying the price of a poor domestic system, Stuff reports;
Yvonne Willering: “I’ve said in the past, our ANZ competition needs to be addressed because I don’t believe it is enough to go straight from there into the Silver Ferns.”
Former Silver Fern-turned-coach Marg Foster feels netball has hit “rock bottom” and changes need to be made.
“The Silver Ferns are our pinnacle. The biggest thing is assuring we are growing the right athletes not at the Ferns level, but at the next level down,” she said.
The understrength but surprisingly robust Black Caps win game two to take a 1-0 ODI series lead in Bangladesh. The game was notable for Ish Sodhi starring with the bat after a controversial Mankad reprieve, and ball;
Sodhi said the recall was “a great gesture,” that he “would like to think that if I was in the same situation as bowler, I would do the same thing,” and that he probably wouldn’t try for such a run-out in the first place.
The (nearly) full-strength and familiarly flimsy White Ferns lose the 1st ODI in South Africa by four wickets, and lose their wicketkeeper in the process:
Bernadine Bezuidenhout has been ruled out of the tour of South Africa after being diagnosed with post-viral Pericarditis.
Liam Lawson once more impressing by beating his (2024 contracted) teammate Yuki Tsunoda at his home GP, with lastwordonsports.com saying he has been guaranteed a drive by Red Bull in 2025:
Red Bull is understood to have promised Liam Lawson a 2025 F1 seat in exchange for the Kiwi’s services as reserve driver next year.
Red Bull is renowned for their ruthlessness when managing its second team, and they have again received scrutiny for their management of AlphaTauri. However, unlike in previous years, Red Bull are under fire for being too hesitant in promoting Lawson. Having given the likes of Nyck de Vries full-time contracts rather freely, the hesitance to offer Lawson a 2024 seat warrants analysis. After all, the 21-year-old is performing at a very high level already in Formula 1.
“As a board, we unanimously agree with the review panel that structural reform is needed to facilitate clarity, alignment, and mutual accountability for rugby in New Zealand,” [NZR chair Dame Patsy Reddy said].
“We will now engage with stakeholders, including the provincial unions and the New Zealand Māori Rugby Board, who hold the voting rights under the NZ Rugby constitution to discuss how to achieve governance reform.
“This first stage of consultation will commence from now and conclude at the end of October.”
This is what is known as a classic placeholder statement.
Dylan,
I worked on the Aus-Wales game and the final 30mins and aftermath was genuinely difficult to watch - a total unraveling and a bunch of Aussie players who were absolutely broken at the end.
The sentiments of the neutrals were similar to you, that while we can have a bit of a laugh at their expense, the ramifications for NZ are significant.
On the flip side side, Wales’ performance showed to me why we need more coverage & analysis of the northern hemisphere comps in NZ. The URC is a bit ropey, but the UK Prem, European comps are superb and clearly producing test-ready players.... we in NZ know all about Michael Hooper, but how many could genuinely talk about the quality of Jac Morgan until last night? (Sorry, this morning!)
I get that there are flow on effects from the shocking Wallabies situation but can't we be allowed 5 minutes to enjoy it first?! 😉