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Rugby Australia announce three-man review panel as search for new Wallabies head coach beckons
By Online Editors
Former Wallaby and cricket administrator Pat Howard is part of a three-person panel who will review the Wallabies' 2019 season following their World Cup flop.
He will be joined by four-time Olympic rower Bo Hanson and 116-test Wallabies forward Nathan Sharpe.
Rugby Australia director Scott Johnson will also work alongside the group to deliver the review over the next month, which will be run separately to the process of appointing a new Wallabies coach.
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The review will involve interviewing all test players and staff and encompass the World Cup campaign as well as other internationals.
It will consider coaching, planning, athletic performance, campaign preparation, team cohesion and selection processes.
A former Wallabies playmaker with 20 test caps, Howard led Rugby Australia's High Performance Unit before joining Cricket Australia in 2011.
His most recent position there was as executive general manager of team performance, responsible for the Australian team's high-performance unit.
He was asked to step down late last year following critical review into Cricket Australia and the ball-tampering affair among a purge of senior administrators.
Hanson, who won three Olympic medals from his four campaigns between 1996 and 2004, is a director of an international business called Athlete Assessments.
He describes himself as an "international coaching consultant" and has worked previously with the Queensland Reds and Australian Sevens teams.
"will offer significant expertise and experience from both within and outside the sport and from both an on and off-field perspective".
"Having these three individuals leading the process will provide a well-rounded perspective on the Wallabies program and enable us to take forward any key learnings for delivery into the major tournament preparations of all of our national teams over the next four-year cycle."
AAP
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Latest Comments
Well that sux.
Go to commentsLike I've said before about your idea (actually it might have been something to do with mine, I can't remember), I like that teams will a small sustainable league focus can gain the reward of more consistent CC involvement. I'd really like the most consistent option available.
Thing is, I think rugby can do better than footballs version. I think for instance I wanted everyone in it to think they can win it, where you're talking about the worst teams not giving up because they are so far off the pace we get really bad scoreline when that and giving up to concentrate on the league is happening together.
So I really like that you could have a way to remedy that, but personally I would want my model to not need that crutch. Some of this is the same problem that football has. I really like the landscape in both the URC and Prem, but Ireland with Leinster specifically, and France, are a problem IMO. In football this has turned CL pool stages in to simply cash cow fixtures for the also ran countries teams who just want to have a Real Madrid or ManC to lose to in their pool for that bumper revenue hit. It's always been a comp that had suffered for real interest until the knockouts as well (they might have changed it in recent years?).
You've got some great principles but I'm not sure it's going to deliver on that hard hitting impact right from the start without the best teams playing in it. I think you might need to think about the most minimal requirement/way/performance, a team needs to execute to stay in the Champions Cup as I was having some thougt about that earlier and had some theory I can't remember. First they could get entry by being a losing quarter finalist in the challenge, then putting all their eggs in the Champions pool play bucket in order to never finish last in their pool, all the while showing the same indifference to their league some show to EPCR rugby now, just to remain in champions. You extrapolate that out and is there ever likely to be more change to the champions cup that the bottom four sides rotate out each year for the 4 challenge teams? Are the leagues ever likely to have the sort of 'flux' required to see some variation? Even a good one like Englands.
I'd love to have a table at hand were you can see all the outcomes, and know how likely any of your top 12 teams are going break into Champions rubyg on th back it it are?
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