He was committed to not coaching the Wallabies after the Lions, but now he is considering whether he can rebalance his priorities and continue with the Wallabies.

Sounds good to me, and it means that RA must thoroughly examine the needs of the Wallabies and the potential options moving forward. A good start to the search for a new coach, if required.

That is unfair in my view. Has grown in the role over the last 6 months or so. A bit hard to answer questions on matters that should not be discussed publicly.

Yawn. Residency should be more important than ancestry but didn’t we tighten those regulations? A better answer would be to combine the requirements so that residency and ancestry are considered together, perhaps only including parents, rather than grandparents. Feels like the UK soccer requirements based on 19th and early 20th century immigration patterns.

Don’t kid yourself TWAS, I doubt if you have any respect for anyone disagreeing with you. As I have been asking for five years, how come you get to reply to people without it appearing in their feed to respond? Lucky Hoy tried to to call me out as well.

As you point out, 2015 was an anomaly in its own way, out performance of a squad that had been failing for years. 2003 should have been the last harrah for many, but an extremely weak field exaggerated our standing. Many continued to 2007 resulting in a weak leadership for players coming in at the time of Deans.

Boasting that a team not good enough in 2015 was still in place in 2019 is hardly an endorsement. A man on man assessment of your replacements would be interesting, but I won’t waste my time.

The post I was responding to was blaming Cheika for everything, your agreement with me is noted.

All agreed, especially spreading the ball wide from side to side without ensuring support and continuity for the tackled player. Rennie made no difference to this but ironically Jones made substantial progress in fixing this. Schmidt likewise, part of his DNA. Disagree that Cheika was “responsible” for the decline. As TWAS points out 2015 was more of an anomaly compared against 2012-2015, or even against 2008-2011.

They need to invest heavily in the types of programs put in place during the Marks era, for the development of both clubs and coaches.

Second into community rugby to provide the opportunities to put skills into action and to broaden the recruitment pathways. Establishing a new district in western Sydney is a priority, having SS clubs in Parramatta and Penrith is not a strategy and will continue to the lack of success established over the last three decades.

A critical part of Marks’ pathways is to expose players to more intensive challenges as they develop, the third tier between club rugby and SR must be filled as a priority. Some form of club competition will really hurt community rugby as players gravitate to the strongest clubs to enhance their chances of playing 3rd tier and winning a SR contract. I can’t understand how retreading the SR teams in Spring helps too many people. A lot of running around for a few games masquerading as trials for a handful of club players not on contract.

Both of those options neglect Melbourne, which rubs salt into the wounds of 2024, as well as further alienating a loyal rugby market and devaluing the potential for recruitment of players. There is a big island population and a bunch of rugby naturals who are not interested in AFL (or vice versa).

Selecting a Melbourne based team to play against professional teams is both unsafe and unfair. Cherry picking a handful of the best players out of Melbourne into other teams is equally unfair, if not downright cynical.

Depending on 2025 results the end game still is a world class Asia Pacific competition incorporating the Asian, American and African countries with 12-16 franchises. Is the right number of Australian teams in SRP in 2026 3 or 4? The hard yards for RA starts now, hoping for an easy way out keeping 100% of the Australian rugby population happy is no longer viable.

So we had a RWC finalist that was a settled side building towards 2019 with the introduction of many even better players? Not quite how I remembered it.

There are a few factors there and isolating the coach’s contribution is difficult, blaming him for a majority of the problems is a joke. RA administration over the previous decades a far bigger contributor in my view.

It would be interesting to look at a detailed analysis of new players coming into SR and the Wallabies over that time. The Force exit also created a logjam of journeymen players at the other franchises.

Schmidt was meeting with his family with a view to confirming his decision to leave after the Lions Tour. Any deviation means a change of heart within Schmidt’s family which is good news.

With at least two assistants leaving I guess that means that Schmidt, Cron and possibly Fisher gone although I would think Fisher would be keeping his cards dry and waiting to see what shapes up.

This article is going down the track of an extensive transition period, which makes some sort of sense.

It is hard to see how a strategy of promoting a SR coach works. It is five steps back if a SR coach is named after an ordinary SR season. What if the least favoured Wallaby contender has a stellar SR season? I don’t think any of them are particularly ready. What do we do if we have not secured an offshore coach and none of the SR coaches step up?

I do find it hard to believe that Schmidt has not gone to RA with a firmish proposal by this time.

The big drop off post RWC 2015 was in player quality, which has lifted since 2019 and in particular as that young group matures.

Thinking through my response exhausted me too.

We could do with some Trans Tasman cooperation here. Underfunded and neglected, I suppose politicians have figured sufferers don’t vote. A massive cost to the country in productivity and crime but nobody really cares. Without individuals like Topo and JK it wouldn’t even rate a mention.

That will be enough to force me to subscribe to Optus Sport and take my MUFC shirt out of mothballs. Desperate times indeed.

I am not sure you can learn from learnings, but surely a learning is what you learn. I guess that is the same as a lesson, but we all know that Australians have continually been given lessons, taken away learnings and still played the same way the following week. It is clearly a controversial area and I suspect there would be significant benefits from a properly scoped and independently conducted review.

I thought Phil Waugh was talking about a competition leveraging off the Sydney and Brisbane club competitions.

I watch, I learn.

Achievements on and off the field in 2024 and presumably strong tickets sales for the Lions has built a 2025 window through which RA could step into a turnaround. While administrations over the last 25 years have shown real talent in dropping balls and running into walls I have some faith. Finally.
The new five year plan is light on detail but shows some precision in identifying what is important and ignoring what isn’t. Transparency is now key, that will be a real cultural transformation.
Merry Xmas Harry, I have enjoyed your articles and learned a bit on the way. Looking forward to next year.

Agreed and partly why I do not think he will take a role with the ABs. Loyalty will be important to him. If he is going then he will have already informed RA, but hopefully they are busy negotiating a new contract and scope of duties and expectations.

If that was the announcement that we are focussing on a super club competition I think the sooner it is forgotten the better. Since I don’t have a say and presuming it goes ahead there are some issues that could be addressed:

The main focus appeared to be on Sydney and Brisbane so how they address the other competitions is important, maybe a representative team from each city. It is really important Melbourne is represented.

The risk of players with potential being excluded from these games because they are in weaker clubs or weaker competitions. Perhaps five marquee selections could be allowed for each participating club.

The risk of better players at weaker clubs transferring to clubs with a higher chance of being in the national competition. This is a significant issue for community rugby if it comes to fruition.

Will the standard be a true bridge between club and SR?

This why you need to come through the gate and not from the side. My biggest frustration is the year on year changes on which laws will be refereed and which laws won’t be. I suspect if all the laws were consistently applied the game would be faster and safer.

Certainly a momentous year, possibly the point where Rugby Australia started to turn the game around. I have been a strident critic of them since 2016, with the volume steadily increasing until around 2022 when I basically just gave up hope on them, although the intense frustration never went away.

The key moments happened last year after the RWC. Eddie was only a catalyst as he inherited a sinking ship, set out his strategy, and changed direction when it became clear it was not going to work. As we now know the RWC all or nothing plan came up empty handed and the whole circus created by Hamish came crashing down, taking Eddie with it.

The states finally did what they should have done in 2018, banded together for the good of the game, instead of their individual interests. The Board could have easily circled the wagons to defend their Chairman and themselves. They had been doing this since 2016 and finally they were circled so tight that a black hole beckoned and Hamish was gone.

While Waugh and Herbert have been criticised as being part of the Boards that created the mess, I have never believed they were anything but a minority vote on a Board owned and operated by Hamish. Personally I think Herbert has done a great job in helping Waugh establish himself as a genuine CEO. From an MBA wannabe to someone who looks confident in the role.

The low point was the handling of the Rebels demise. These situations will always take on a life of their own heading down a path nobody predicts, with plenty of twists and turns, claims and counter claims, lies and defamatory statements. Waugh and Herbert did not handle this well, but not many do either. Apart from a lack of experience in such situations, no situation is similar to another anyway. They will have been helped and hindered by professional advisers and advice.

Never forget they were cleaning up somebody else’s mess. Prior RA administrations, the Rebels Board, the White Knight, and of course Hamish. There was only one ending possible and anyone thinking there were any options was kidding themselves. The phoenix out of the ashes is that there will be four stronger sides in 2025. This was a structural problem of Hamish’s making insisting on five SRP sides as being the optimal solution for Australian rugby.

I am always optimistic about ‘next year’ but this is the first time for a while there is some solid basis for it. Joe Schmidt has arrested the slide and established a base to work from. In the process proving himself as one of the finest coaches of his generation. That confidence will flow through into SRP 2025 and by the end of the season we might be feeling optimistic about the Lions tour.

Thank you to everyone who has read my comments and responded throughout the year, even those of you who clearly have no idea. To the experts and writers, thank you.

Merry Xmas

All very well, but who is a step forward from Joe Schmidt? The only Australian SR coach with any success is Larkham and the jury is well and truly out on whether his success is predominantly his, or on the Brumbies development factory.

Which ones did you think were competent, and based on what demonstrable achievement?

Why? I don’t see how the RA “takeover” affects the Brumbies on field performance.

Waratahs and Brumbies have serially failed to attract members and spectators and were in financial decline. Hopefully the economies of scale can provide a better result.

Quite a few Rebels have landed in Sydney against their preferences. The Brumbies have preferred to turn to their developing players instead of recruiting players developed somewhere else. Laudable and also reasonable based on past performance. Outcome unknown.

I think the Brumbies are a bit of an unknown. It hardly seems possible that the other three sides will not be significantly better, just by way of recruitment and development.

There will be some incremental improvement in their core of experienced consistently high performing players. Tua for me is a big loss, but circumstances may have provided for a solution at 12 with Ikiteau. There has been little recruitment is a clear statement of faith in their systems.

I am very interested in seeing how that plays out for them, it will be bitter sweet whichever way it goes. There is a serious risk they hit a ceiling and two wins for the Tahs this year,