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The timeline of Dave Rennie's short-lived Wallabies career
By AAP
The key moments in Dave Rennie's Wallabies coaching career leading to his shock axing eight months out from the 2023 Rugby World Cup.
* NOVEMBER 2019 - New Zealander Rennie, the first first-year Super Rugby coach to win a Super Rugby title, is announced as Michael Cheika's Wallabies replacement. He volunteers to take a 30 per cent pay cut as COVID-19 hits RA's coffers hard.
* OCTOBER 2020 - Australia come within a whisker of a Bledisloe Cup upset win in Wellington but had to settle for a 16-16 draw in their first Test under the new coach. A month later he celebrates his first win in charge, against the All Blacks in Brisbane.
* SEPTEMBER 2021 - Rennie makes huge selection gamble, recalling Quade Cooper to face the Springboks after a comprehensive 3-0 Bledisloe Cup series loss. It pays off, the side winning five straight games and jumping to third in the world rankings.
* NOVEMBER 2021 - Without Cooper and Samu Kerevi in the side, a heavy loss to Eddie Jones' England is sandwiched between tight losses to Scotland and Wales to spoil things. Rennie will eventually be axed without winning back-to-back Tests again.
* FEBRUARY 2022 - Having already experimented with similar allowances, a new eligibility law allows Rennie to pick three overseas-based players who have 30 Test caps or a minimum of five years' service to Australian Rugby.
* JULY 2022 - Jones' England arrive in Australia and stage a comeback 2-1 series win. Pivotal centre Kerevi then tears his ACL during Australia's Commonwealth Games rugby sevens campaign.
* AUGUST 2022 - Quade Cooper then joins a mounting injury toll in Argentina, his replacement James O'Connor then dropped after the Wallabies are thumped in San Juan.
* SEPTEMBER 2022 - Pressure builds on Rennie and his depleted squad after one win and three losses in Tests at home and New Zealand and their ranking drops to eighth in the world.
* NOVEMBER 2022 - Poor discipline, curious selections and more injuries feature in a 2-3 European tour swing where the first three Tests are decided by one point. Rennie copped criticism for resting key men in a three-point loss to Italy but then finished with a brave comeback defeat of Wales.
* DECEMBER 2022 - Eddie Jones is sacked by England as Rugby Australia launch an independent review into the Wallabies' 2022 fortunes.
* JANUARY 2023 - Gathered for a four-day camp, Rennie tells media he is adamant Jones won't play a role alongside him at the World Cup and dismisses reports he's already signed to coach club rugby in Japan once his contract expires at the end of the year.
* JANUARY 2023 - RA announce Eddie Jones will replace Rennie immediately, leaving Rennie with the worst winning percentage (38) of any Wallabies coach to oversee 30 or more Tests.
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Latest Comments
Nah, that just needs some more variation. Chip kicks, grubber stabs, all those. Will Jordan showed a pretty good reason why the rush was bad for his link up with BB.
If you have an overlap on a rush defense, they naturally cover out and out and leave a huge gap near the ruck.
It also helps if both teams play the same rules. ARs set the offside line 1m past where the last mans feet were😅
Go to commentsYeah nar, should work for sure. I was just asking why would you do it that way?
It could be achieved by outsourcing all your IP and players to New Zealand, Japan, and America, with a big Super competition between those countries raking it in with all of Australia's best talent to help them at a club level. When there is enough of a following and players coming through internally, and from other international countries (starting out like Australia/without a pro scene), for these high profile clubs to compete without a heavy australian base, then RA could use all the money they'd saved over the decades to turn things around at home and fund 4 super sides of their own that would be good enough to compete.
That sounds like a great model to reset the game in Aus. Take a couple of decades to invest in youth and community networks before trying to become professional again. I just suggest most aussies would be a bit more optimistic they can make it work without the two decades without any pro club rugby bit.
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