Wallabies World Cup review lands on Joe Schmidt's desk hours before arrival
New Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt is yet to view the findings of a report into the side's World Cup failings that was submitted on the day he was ushered into the role.
Former Wallabies Andrew Slack and Justin Harrison, as well as high-performance and coaching consultant Darlene Harrison were charged with leading an external review into the side's early exit from last year's tournament in France.
That review, announced on November 2, hit Rugby Australia (RA) chief executive Phil Waugh's desk on Friday just hours before he sat next to Schmidt to officially announce him as Eddie Jones's replacement.
"The review has been finalised and the board were briefed on the review findings," Waugh told AAP on Friday.
"We're just working through that now with the executive team and with the board and then we'll work through how we publish the findings and go from there.
"It's very fresh on our desk so we're just going through it and ensuring that the appropriate disclosures are made.
"When you do a review, you want to ensure there's absolute confidence from those that are giving you information, so you've just got to make sure that information is appropriate."
Waugh said Schmidt had not yet seen the report.
The New Zealander and former Ireland mentor has signed a deal up to and including the 2025 British and Irish Lions tour of Australia.
Coach Jones' exit was part of RA's administrative overhaul following the France flop, with Dan Herbert replacing Hamish McLennan as chairman and Peter Horne joining the organisation as high-performance boss.
Former Wallaby David Nucifora, who as high-performance chief alongside Schmidt turned Ireland into a world-leading force, has also been lured back into the fold.
How their vision sits alongside the review's findings remains to be seen, with Schmidt set to visit Super Rugby clubs and familiarise himself with players ahead of Wales's visit in July.
"I can't promise anything other than I'll be working really hard to try to make it as successful as it can be and try to get some early wins on the board," Schmidt said.
"And those wins may be just that we perform better, even if we don't quite get the outcomes we're looking for.
"But I'm also a realistic coach. You're judged on your outcomes and you live or die by them."
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That's really stupidly pedantic. Let's say the gods had smiled on us, and we were playing Ireland in Belfast on this trip. Then you'd be happy to accept it as a tour of the UK. But they're not going to Australia, or Peru, or the Philippines, they're going to the UK. If they had a match in Paris it would be fair to call it the "end-of-year European tour". I think your issue has less to do with the definition of the United Kingdom, and is more about what is meant by the word "tour". By your definition of the word, a road trip starting in Marseilles, tootling through the Massif Central and cruising down to pop in at La Rochelle, then heading north to Cherbourg, moving along the coast to imagine what it was like on the beach at Dunkirk, cutting east to Strasbourg and ending in Lyon cannot be called a "tour of France" because there's no visit to St. Tropez, or the Louvre, or Martinique in the Caribbean.
Go to commentsJust thought for a moment you might have gathered some commonsense from a southerner or a NZer and shut up. But no, idiots aren't smart enough to realise they are idiots.
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