With the grassroots game struggling, participation in decline and Super Rugby on the wane, the writing has been on the wall for years
And while the wily 63-year-old did grab some column inches early with his one-liners and his poaching of Joseph Sua’ali’i from the NRL, he has failed where it matters most – on the field with his team.
There was little time for Jones to implement changes or try new players with only a handful of games before the World Cup. The coach decided to gamble massively by leaving captain Michael Hooper at home, along with veteran playmakers Quade Cooper and Bernard Foley. Instead he took just one recognised No 10, Carter Gordon, as part of a young squad to try and build for the future. It’s a strategy that has been badly exposed in France.
The 76-cap Wallaby is right. Rugby Australia does not need a magician to turn around the fate of the sport and its national team, it needs real reform to its provincial system, a national model similar to that employed by Ireland and improvement to its pathways. It needs changes to its selection policies, a bigger focus on its amateur ranks and an end to the blazer brigade and old boys network that dominates its power structures.
“There’s been a long period of mediocrity and it needs to change,” World Cup winner George Gregan admitted after the Wales fiasco. There’s no time like the present.
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