Inside contender for Wallaby job
Inside contender for Wallaby job
Wayne Smith | August 14, 2007
AUSTRALIAN Rugby Union chief executive John O'Neill would not exclude his new high-performance unit manager Pat Howard as a contender for the Wallabies' coaching position if no strong candidate emerges to take over from John Connolly.
Howard has been given the task of finding the next coach to take over the Wallabies once Connolly's contract expires after the World Cup.
And the former Wallabies back and Leicester coach yesterday laughed off suggestions his own name might appear on the short list he draws up for O'Neill and the ARU board.
"I'm out," Howard said. "That would be a terrible conflict of interest."
But it would only take for the leading contender for the position, Crusaders mentor Robbie Deans, to be offered the All Blacks coaching job - which surely will happen if the Graham Henry-led New Zealand coaching team fails to deliver the World Cup in October - for Howard to emerge as the welcome answer to what is becoming a vexing problem for the ARU.
The other frontline candidates, Ewen McKenzie, Laurie Fisher, David Nucifora, Scott Johnson and John Muggleton, are seen as worthy applicants but all have worrying gaps in their CVs.
Howard is a third generation Wallaby whose father, Jake, was on the Australian coaching staff in the 1990s. Howard has just come off a brilliant coaching stint in England with the Leicester Tigers.
"Pat's credentials are outstanding," O'Neill said yesterday. "I wouldn't exclude him for the Wallabies job but that's not why I hired him. I haven't contemplated him coaching the Wallabies and I'm very excited to have him in the job he's doing.
"I asked Pat if he wanted to coach and he told me he would prefer to do something else.
"But you never say never."
Asked whether he would turn to Howard if he felt no other suitable contender had emerged to replace Connolly, O'Neill replied: "We want to find the best person for the job, whoever that person is."
Howard faced his first serious test as high performance unit manager yesterday when he chaired a two-hour meeting with Connolly, Wallabies managers Phil Thomson and Chris Webb and captain Stirling Mortlock to formulate recommendations to put to O'Neill today to ensure there is no repeat at the World Cup of Friday's Lote Tuqiri-Matt Dunning episode in Brisbane.
The two players are scheduled to meet O'Neill later today to be told in no uncertain terms they brought the game into disrepute by inviting strangers back to Dunning's hotel room for drinks around 4am on Friday. Less than 80 minutes later, one of the men drinking with the Wallabies allegedly violently assaulted a taxi driver.
Details of yesterday's meeting have been kept confidential but indications beforehand were that a range of sanctions would be considered, from alcohol counselling for the two players, to individual alcohol bans placed on them during the World Cup, to their expulsion from the World Cup squad.
The final option would surely be an overreaction, given that neither player had anything to do with the assault, but there is no disguising the fact they have angered officials with their behaviour, attitude and dishevelled appearances in weekend press photographs.
Tuqiri is expected to be issued a final warning letter. Although some officials have been dismayed that he appeared relatively unconcerned with being suspended from the Wallabies' past two Tests, also for an alcohol-related offence, the loss of Test match payments would pale into insignificance against the cancellation of his reputed $1million-a-year contract.
Meanwhile, Dunning's stand-by understudy, Benn Robinson, has lost his slim chance of a World Cup call-up. The Waratahs prop will undergo surgery today for a break in his foot sustained in the opening round of the Australian Rugby Championship, with Brumbies front-rower Nic Henderson expected to become the new shadow loosehead.
