The words of Rob Penney in February have turned out to be prophetic indeed. Like Jacob Marley’s ghost, they have returned to haunt the Waratahs organisation he left behind. Before the beginning of Super Rugby Pacific 2024, the Crusaders head coach responded to reports the New South Wales board was ready to swing the axe, and decide the future of his successor Darren Coleman by the end of March.
“If that’s accurate, which I understand it is, they haven’t learned anything, have they?” Penney told The Roar.
“I feel really sorry for Darren. No one should be put under that sort of pressure under the situation he went into. It was always going to be a project.
“We’ll probably catch up on the sidelines [ahead of the second-round match between the Crusaders and Waratahs at AAMI Park].
“I reached out to him when I left – just offering anything I could do to support his incoming.”
On 28th March 2021, much the same happened to the New Zealander, cut adrift unceremoniously only five matches into the Super Rugby season. Penney’s role was assumed by his assistants Chris Whitaker and Jason Gilmore, who failed to win a match for the rest of the season.
If you sense something is rotten in the state of Denmark, you would probably be right. Nobody is entrusted with the task of rebuilding the Waratahs for very long. The restoration clause has a hidden termination date, the trap can be sprung at any time, and the coach is always the man to blame.
In Coleman’s case, a vicious 2024 front-row injury curse was conveniently forgotten. Eight of Coleman’s ten original props or hookers suffered season-ending injuries, and the head coach has been reduced to picking hookers straight out of club football to fill the gaps. It did not matter. On 20th May, Coleman’s departure was confirmed, even though he had led the club to play-off appearances in each of his first two seasons in charge.
A player exodus from Daceyville is likely to ensue: all-world flanker Michael Hooper has already taken wing to the HSBC SVNS Series, while Will Harris, Ben Donaldson and Kurtley Beale [who could have been a top-drawer mentor for young Max Jorgensen] have gone to the Western Force. Other luminaries such as Ned Hanigan, Lachie Swinton, Izzy Perese, Mark Nawaqanitawase and even skipper Jake Gordon are at various stages of following them out of the door.
Promising young players including Harry Wilson and Sione Tuipulotu’s younger brother Mosese, who should be keen to stay, are deciding to leave for foreign shores instead. Australia is losing the micro-battles to build national depth by qualification – via grand-parentage or residency. Mosese sees Sione’s 25 Scotland caps and what a key player he has become for his adopted country. It provides a clearly-defined career path for the younger sibling.
Even those who do travel in the opposite direction, such as leaguer Joseph-Aukuso Sua’ali’i, will find themselves in an unwanted struggle for their places in an overloaded backfield.
‘High-performance function’ is an organisation-wide responsibility embracing recruitment, player identification and development, and sound cultural values. Above all, there needs to be absolute mutual trust between administrator, coach and player, with no hidden agendas.
It is that cultural battle new Wallaby head honcho Joe Schmidt will have to fight with one hand tied behind his back over the next seven weeks, before the two-Test series against Wales. With one heartbeat state dysfunctional, a second expansion franchise under imminent threat [in Victoria], and third still struggling to establish its winning credentials [in Western Australia], he will build his hopes around established facts in Canberra and Brisbane.
Thus far in 2024, the Brumbies and Reds have accrued 84 points between them, 27 more than the Rebels, Force and Waratahs combined. In this article published seven weeks ago I outlined the shape of a likely Wallaby 36-man squad. How does it look now?
In the backs, Suliasi Vunivalu shot himself comprehensively in the foot with the recent double trip red card, and Nawaqanitawase is the only other outstanding big wing in Australia. Schmidt may find a spot for James O’Connor to play the same mentoring role for two young 10s as Nic White performs for the nines.
Up front, the return of hooker Brandon Paenga-Amosa to the Force gives Mike Cron a very timely reinforcement at scrum time. When he left for Montpellier three seasons ago, Paenga-Amosa was the biggest and the best scrummaging rake in Australia, and he has lost nothing in comparison with his adversaries in the Top 14. The big man is raring to go.
“I’m so keen to be back in Australia, it’s home,” he said. “I’m really excited to be a part of the Force set-up, especially working with ‘Cronno’ [Mike’s nephew Simon] and the lads that are there.
“Returning to Australia and putting my hand up for the Wallabies again was a big attraction after three seasons in France.
“I’m big on culture on and off the field, so adding to the culture that is already being established is one of the key focus points for me.”
Again, that same word – culture. The key change will occur in a rearrangement of back-five resources. If Will Skelton starts, it will either mean a shift for Seru Uru or Nick Frost to number six; or picking Queensland captain and lineout caller Liam Wright there instead.
In league terms, Wright ranks first in lineout takes, second in attacking ruck attendances [210], sixth in tackles completed and seventh in breakdown pilfers. He is the understated Queensland workaholic, happy to do his work in the shadows, unseen.
But his value is known and understood by the cognoscenti. With Wright and Uru working in tandem early in the season, the Queensland lineout was running at a 90% retention rate and they combined for nine receipts per game. Seru Uru returned for the round 14 game against the Force, and the slickness of the Queensland lineout operation quickly flooded the attacking body of the whole with confidence, like a blood transfusion.
It is the first attacking lineout of the match, and Wright has the confidence to enter late and call the throw straight over the top, knowing a fake jump at the tail will also take out his main opponent Izack Rodda in the air, along with his back-lift, hooker Tom Horton.
Wright and Uru are also the twin keys to a successful Reds’ four-man line.
The slick interplay between Uru and Wright once again breeds the confidence to take on the best defender and win prime-quality ball where you really want it – from the tail of the line.
The two-phase Queensland try in the 16th minute was as much a reward for the Reds’ excellent lineout variations as it was for the cohesion of their back play.
This time Uru collects the throw in the four-man line, and the Force D loses track of the movements of blind-side wing Mac Grealy [in the white hat], perhaps mindful of the damage he did starting much closer to the lineout fringes at the beginning of the game. From the Maroon perspective, it all works like a well-oiled machine.
The single biggest advance in the quality of Liam Wright’s play lies in the extra effort and nuance he has added to his ball-carrying.
Those extra YAC [yards-in-contact] count for a lot, leaving two defenders prone on the wrong side of the ruck as Tate McDermott stoops to play the ball in the first clip, while the quick thinking to release the ball and play it again instantly results in a clean break in the second. Eventually the frustration at being unable to stop Wright on the ad-line boiled over, drawing a yellow card for a high hit by the Force’s Reed Prinsep.
‘They haven’t learned anything, have they?’ The words of Penney must be burning in the ears of New South Wales administrators. Dismissing coaches in mid-term is classic counter-culture, if you have any intention to build a culture on solid foundations.
If Hamish McLennan’s gleeful ‘coup’ in signing Eddie Jones before the 2023 World Cup was not enough to prove it, surely the dangers of doubling down and claiming ‘given the circumstances, I would probably make the same call again’ should have been enough to close a circle of needless errors.
In Coleman’s case, it did not. His replacement was apparently mooted as early as the end of March, one short month into the Super Rugby Pacific season. For Schmidt, it means there are only two cultures he can fully trust, and those are in Canberra and Brisbane. To paraphrase the English historian Arnold J. Toynbee, ‘civilisations [cultures] die by suicide, not by murder’. The bulk of Schmidt’s picks will come from the Brumbies and the Reds, with no apology offered.
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