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The first thing that struck me when I became Wallabies coach a couple of years ago was the lack of depth in Australian rugby.
The game has evolved in recent years. We now play in a Super 14 competition rather than a Super 12 and we play 15 Tests a year instead of 10, which puts a huge strain on resources.
In a World Cup year last season, two Australian provinces finished last and second last, which created its own problems. It also hit me how few people in Australia understood world rugby and what is required.
But it was great to see during the Pacific Nations Cup how much our depth has improved. There are now many players challenging for Test spots and the future is looking pretty good.
I believe we have a genuine chance of winning the Tri Nations. In the past two years Australia have finished second to New Zealand, with South Africa picking up the wooden spoon....(and so on here about the teams for the 3N)
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Article itself is standard stuff, but what a load of history re-writing to start...
His position seems to be that he had no depth to work with, but then they introduced the Force and upped the number of Tests. These weren't good things because they "strained the resources" and were the reason the Reds and Tahs sucked in 2007 but magically, within a year, player depth has vastly increased as seen in the PNC (although no mention that the IRB had to come up with that comp, prior to which Aus A was almost non-existant). And so his successor finds himself in so much better a position than Connolly was ever in, so no wonder he is bringing in all these new players.
I can't help but wonder what resources he is talking about being stretched if it is not player depth as that has increased? But more to the point, if it was so easy to sort out the depth issue in Australian rugby, what the hell have they all been doing for so long? Of course, there is absolutely no chance that the players were actually there all along but were short-changed on opportunities to show their abilities and ignored by the an overly conservative Wallabies set-up that played favourites...
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Originally Posted by tragic
sucked the life out of Australian rugby.....in 2008 the situation has turned around and the player depth has improved to the point where we can now win the tri nations......either that or John Connoly wasn't the goods and Robbie Deans is!
