FEATURE 'It's do-or-die for Australian rugby as Lions loom'

“I don’t take responsibility for 20 years of decline of Australian rugby. And that’s what’s trying to be pinned on me – 20 years of decline.”

Eddie Jones may have been wrong to blame the specifics of the Wallabies’ disastrous World Cup on systemic decay, but there is no doubt it remains a huge shadow hanging over the future of Australian rugby. Now the man who appointed Jones, chairman Hamish McLennan, has gone too.

It is a sign of very turbulent times indeed. Major sponsors of the Wallabies such as Cadbury now appear ready to jump ship, and private equity has already walked. As one of the honourable folks remaining in Australian rugby, Brumbies coach ‘Lord’ Laurie Fisher tweeted, “Thus endeth an horrific year for Oz rugby. Time to unite and move forward. Let’s all get on board.”

A momentous few years lie ahead: a British and Irish Lions tour in 2025, the men’s World Cup in 2027, and the women’s version two years later. How Australian rugby responds to those events on the field, and how it deploys the financial windfall which derives from them off it, will be crucial to the health of a patient which has spent the longest period of any top-tier nation in rugby’s equivalent of intensive care.

The convalescence needs to be accurately mapped and the rehab needs to start now, with the Lions only 18 months away. It is likely to be one of the strongest Lions squads in history and an unimpeded two-week period of preparation has already been guaranteed by the English Premiership and the URC before the tour opener against the Western Force on 28 June. That has never happened before, so the Lions will be primed and ready to roar.

The most fundamental building block for Australia is an improvement in the effectiveness of its five-franchise system. Teams other than the Brumbies need to start beating their New Zealand opponents regularly in Super Rugby Pacific 2024, and all five franchises need to be prepared for the onslaught of a well-honed international team drawn from the cream of the four ‘home nations’ one year later.

When I toured Australia with the 2001 Lions party as advisor to head coach Graham Henry, one of the most common conversations among the coaching panel was the difficulty of the itinerary. Not difficulty ‘New Zealand-style’ where the toughness of the opposition and the quality of the midweek games hammer you into shape for the Test series – but hard for precisely the opposite reason.

Twenty-two years ago, Henry’s Lions only had one serious trial before the first Test in Brisbane, and that was an Eddie Jones-engineered ambush in Gosford by Australia ‘A’. Take that game out of the equation, and the Lions won the other five by an average score of 66- 10. Henry would often confide he had no idea what his best combinations were, because they had never been subjected to any pressure at all.

Despite the presence of 30,000 red-clad supporters on a once-in-a-lifetime visit to the other side of the world, the Lions never made the headlines in the local or national newspapers. The pages were saturated with coverage of the State of Origin series in league. When I informed my local taxi driver in Townsville I was on a big rugby tour, he pondered for a moment before replying, “Who’s yer money on then? Andrew Johns or ‘Alfie’ Langer?”

I was touring a magnificent country in which the unique sporting centrepiece seemed nigh invisible, a marginal footnote to a story being told elsewhere. The relationship between union and league resembled the link between major population centres along the coast and the vast, unmapped interior of the country. Perth was a strikingly modern metropolis, but three or four miles outside it, you were out in the never-ending wilderness, the rugby ‘outback’. The Lions coaches and players all felt the same way.

By the end of the tour, Henry found himself recommending hugely scaled-down visits in the future, just six consecutive Saturdays including a three-Test series. That would be enough.

The touring itinerary for 2025 is a virtual carbon copy of 2001. There are nine games instead of 10, and five games rather than six (including the obligatory ‘invitational’ fixture) before the Test series begins. Even the sequence of opponents is the same – first Western Australia (the Force), then Queensland, New South Wales and the Brumbies. But in the intervening 22 years, the northern hemisphere has waxed in strength while Australia has waned.

A speedy gallop through the five provinces, followed by a leisurely canter through the Test series will do the credibility of Australian rugby no good at all. Before McLennan was forced out, there were signs concrete remedial steps were being taken. The Waratahs’ professional rugby operations (both playing/coaching and marketing aspects) were recently integrated with Rugby Australia’s own high-performance and commercial objectives. All the other franchises were likely to follow suit and fall into line. Who will now force through those much-needed changes? Who will be the king who forces the states to act as one?

As RA’s new CEO Phil Waugh announced: “We have a plan we are working on to unite the game – it will take the whole game to rebuild a system which delivers success on and off the field.”

Raids into the NRL for talent, such as the 2023 incursion for Joseph-Aukuso Sua’alii, are high-profile marketing exercises but very rarely are they cost-effective. The bear has been poked, and league is already talking retaliation: the word is out on promising young union products including Mark Nawaqanitawase and Max Jorgensen, with the former reportedly targeted by the Sydney Roosters.

As NRL chief Andrew Abdo recently suggested :“Growth is on our agenda, so while our primary focus is developing rugby league talent through our own pathways, we’re also open to attracting [players] and, potentially in some cases, [those] returning to league from other codes.

“Would salary-cap relief be potentially used? Yes.

“That’s an absolute possibility that the commission will consider in due course.”

Australian Rugby is not so much burning on a short fuse as fighting for its very existence, and it is becoming a race against time to avoid total humiliation in 2025.

RA needs to act now to secure the future of the Wallabies, and the players it foresees as the key to success two years hence. Forwards such as Angus Bell, Taniela Tupou, Nick Frost and Will Skelton should form the backbone of the tight five against the Lions, while outside backs such as Nawaqanitawase, Jordie Petaia and Jorgensen may well be part of the best backfield Australia can put on the field. That must mean free access to European-based players such as Skelton, and domestic fencing erected around young talents such as Nawaqanitawase.

Skelton will still be only 33 years of age when the Lions arrive, and he does not have many international miles on the clock. The big man from La Rochelle has so many points of difference in the second row that it is quite easy to forgive him the lack of orthodox lineout jumping acumen: he is one of the top three maul defenders in world rugby, and with both ‘Skelts’ and the Tongan Thor on the right side of the front row, the scrum shifts up a couple of gears.

The Wallabies won two penalties off the French scrum in the preparatory game immediately before the World Cup, and they took the much-vaunted Georgian pack to the cleaners at the pool stage.

The Georgian loose-head and hooker cannot plant their feet and set a stable platform, such is the pressure manifesting from 275 kilos of scrum bestiality on the Aussie tight-head side.

Skelton has also given the Wallaby defence a focal point as a ‘jackaler’ at defensive breakdowns. Australia have been light on true competitors at the tackle area ever since David Pocock’s retirement, but Skelton has fixed that problem, winning two turnovers versus the French and another pair against Georgia.

Once he is established directly above the ball-carrier, big Will is quite simply ‘too big to fail’.

Along with Bell, Skelton is one of two key ball-carriers in the Wallaby tight five. When Australia scored a try in the 61^st minute against France, they did it short-handed with 14 men, and it was four carries from Bell and Skelton which propelled the them up the short side, all the way from their own 40m line to the edge of the France 22. That set up a chip and a first-touch by Nawaqanitawase.

The winger’s ability to get into the air early, and ‘hang’ in the heavens until the ball returns to earth is prodigious, even by AFL standards.

He can utilize his height to offload on the edge.

Henry Arundell-like, he is developing the kicking skills to occupy a more central role as full-back.

Australia needs access to these players, and to ensure they receive the blue-chip coaching they need to improve and fulfil their potential – if not at home, then elsewhere through partnerships arranged and managed with selected big clubs outside Australia.

Above all, Australia needs the five-team format to work in Super Rugby Pacific, which means at least three of its franchises must have winning seasons before the Lions descend. The winning culture needs to be established within the country at provincial level, not outside it by a roaming giant playing in the Bay of Biscay.

Home-grown talents will only hang on if they feel their careers are progressing. Otherwise, they may as well seek their fortunes in the NRL, or at a club in the Top 14 or URC. With Jones and McLennan gone, it really is that simple, and it really is ‘do-or-die’ for Australian rugby now.