FEATURE Carter Gordon and the Rebels without a cause

‘She’ll be right’. It has been the clarion call for Australian sport for so very long. Cometh the hour, and the Aussie man, woman or sporting team will unfailingly appear at peak performance. Right now, cracks in the foundations of Australian rugby keep showing up, and there is precious little evidence of it all coming together on opening night.

The return of the prodigal son, Eddie Jones, probably the most experienced active coach in international rugby [Warren Gatland might argue], was supposed to cure all ills, right the wrongs of the Dave Rennie era and turn the World Cup into a celebration of the enduring value of green and gold. Whatever the problems, Eddie would fix them.

In the event, it all finished in tears. The Wallabies produced the worst performance in their illustrious history, Jones was sacked and man who appointed him, Hamish McLennan, was forcibly removed from his position as RA chairman.

It is now 10 years since an Australian club last achieved a Super Rugby title, and the contests between New Zealand and Australia have become ever more tilted towards the All Blacks. The latest visible piece of the Australian rugby iceberg to break off is the Melbourne Rebels franchise, which entered voluntary administration on Monday evening.

The failure of the club was linked to the collapse of a string of companies under the BRC Capital umbrella, owned by Melbourne businessman Paul Docherty. Six subsidiaries which provide $100,000 sponsorship to the Rebels have been placed into administration over the past two months, and another four have been wound up or liquidated.

RA has offered to pick up the slack and ensure the Rebels play out the full season, but exactly how will they go about fulfilling new CEO Phil Waugh’s Tuesday statement of intent?

“As custodians of the game, we are determined to ensure Rugby Australia is making responsible decisions for a sustainable and successful future,” Waugh said. “We will work with the Rebels and the relevant stakeholders to that end.

“Through our strong partnership – forged through decades of staging major events in Melbourne – our focus is to work with the Victorian Government and its key agencies, including Melbourne and Olympic Parks Trust, to ensure the Rebels’ participation in the 2024 Super Rugby season and the continuation of professional rugby in the state.”

RA wants to move towards a more centralised ‘Irish’ model but it does not have the financial clout to invest in its individual operators.

There is a lot at stake in the capital of Victoria, which was mooted to host at least one fixture on the 2025 British and Irish Lions tour, and the Rugby World Cup final two year later.

There is a Gordian knot which needs to be severed, or untied. The organisation which is now offering to provide a solution also helped in large measure to create the problem. As The Roar’s resident rugby expert Geoff Parkes observed in his excellent weekly column: “Four years ago, franchises received an annual grant of $5.5m AUD, which Rugby Australia cut by $1.7m AUD during covid. Despite franchises receiving assurances funding would be restored to pre-covid levels and, not unreasonably, budgeting on that basis, realisation has set in this shortfall – now totalling $6.8m – will never be made up.”

RA wants to move towards a more centralised ‘Irish’ model but it does not have the financial clout to invest in its individual operators. There is no Super Rugby broadcast deal in place post-2025, and that coincides with a new cycle when Rebels players and coaches will be out of contract and looking for a new job. The ‘Rebels risk’ may yet extend to the Brumbies in Canberra, the original expansion franchise in Australia. ‘She’ll be right’ does not cut the mustard in a new era of uncertainty, filtering as it does all the way from the top of the game downwards.

The sincerity of the new leadership may not be in doubt. It may earnestly want to match action to the words of new RA chairman Daniel Herbert, the “need to put the foundations in, [the] need to get the right people in and [the] need to get unity”. But that stability and cohesion comes with a price tag. It is bought dearly and it has a concrete parallel in the attitude towards coaching and coach education.

One of the most urgent questions in that parallel universe is what becomes of Carter Gordon? He was rightly touted as one of the bright young talents of 2023 at fly-half. He has the tools and physical potential to be a Test-match operator with 60+ caps to his name. But thus far, Australian player development has done everything in its power to derail rather than accelerate his career.

Rewind to 2021, and [then] Wallaby head coach Rennie taking a huge punt on Quade Cooper in the Rugby Championship. It came off resoundingly well, and there was every sign Cooper embodied the mature influence every Australian rugby supporter hoped he would eventually become. He could still pull the odd rabbit out of a hat, but there was solidity in his on-field leadership, and the desire to help others off it.

Cooper was in full bloom, and all Jones had to do in the build-up to the World Cup was cosset him in cotton wool, keep him injury-free and bring him fresh to the tournament proper. Instead, Cooper was rudely cast out of the squad entirely after only two games against South Africa and Argentina. Everything the man himself had so clearly learned, and all the precious substance he had accumulated throughout a rollercoaster career, went with him.

Gordon was anointed as the chosen one well ahead of his time, and all too predictably he was dumped after a failure of confidence in the loss to Fiji in the second pool match. He was replaced for the final two games by a man who had up to that point been rated as the second-best 10 at the Waratahs, Ben Donaldson.

It was impossible to argue with Sonny-Bill Williams’ post-game assessment on Stan Sports: “I feel for Carter Gordon right now, because he doesn’t have a Quade Cooper or a Bernard Foley to go back to at the hotel and pull him aside and say, ‘Look, these things happen’.

“It’s really tough seeing him get pulled like that. I am going to call it how it is. We are in a high-performance arena and sometimes you live and die by your decisions. Eddie Jones got found out, unfortunately.

“Moving forward, what are [Australia] going to do about Carter Gordon? Personally, I would love to see Carter get another shot, just for the young man’s confidence. He’s been there or thereabouts the whole time for the last six or seven weeks. For him to be pulled out like that would be a tragedy.”

Jones saw it all as part and parcel of a painful apprenticeship, but it is common sense only to throw a man in the deep water when you are confident he is able to swim; and if he cannot, have a lifeguard ready to hand, a Cooper to glide to his assistance. As it was, the odds were never in Gordon’s favour at the start of what should by rights be a long and well-starred international career.

The long-term psychological damage from that rough entry to the international game is anyone’s guess, but Gordon’s rehab will not be improved by the knowledge he is now effectively on a one-year contract, with no job security beyond 2024. It is the polar opposite of ‘stability’ and ‘cohesion’.

All any player wants is a working platform to display their wares, the chance to play within a successful team culture capable of winning silverware, and coaching which brings out the best of their ability in an organic process of improvement. One of the brightest talents in Australian rugby has neither of those things.

At such a time it seems only right to dwell on the positives and promise of a gifted young fly-half. If he can find the right cultural and coaching environment, Gordon will be the next number 10 star for the Wallabies. It was never showcased with Jones’ World Cup charges, but Gordon can be a top-shelf kicker either very long for position, or very short in attack.

Gordon is most uncomfortable when asked to make calculated kicks of intermediate length, and naturally this was the main demand made of him at the World Cup. Give him a simple instinctive aim, and more often than not, he will hit the target.

Aggression, not calculation, is the keystone of his game. As a playmaker, Gordon is at his best when he turns north-south quickly and challenges the gain-line with ball in hand.

Even as a tackler, the Melburnian is not one to manoeuvre his opponents into the corner he wants, or use the touchline as his friend. He wants to take his foes head on.

The same lung-bursting running power grants him high quality in cover defence, a big plus for the modern 10.

If the new sincere and unified version of Rugby Australia is to succeed, it needs to provide platforms for its young players to prosper.

If that means reducing the five-franchise format to four or even three, so be it. RA must have a clear and affordable sense of purpose, not promising heaven on earth like Jones and McLennan. It must deliver a garden it knows it can tend.

There is no room for rash promises or the ‘she’ll be rights’ anymore, and that would suit Gordon just fine. Give him the back-up he knows he can rely on. Give him a club with a chance of winning something, and coaches who know how to maximise his growth. That would do very nicely indeed, thank you.