CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
For anyone still looking for concrete proof that Australian rugby is being run by the type of people who have also destroyed the Liberal Party under Scott Morrison, the administrative body behind the ailing sport has this week announced an ‘external review’ of the Wallabies lacklustre 2023 World Cup performance.
The review panel is expected to deliver its findings on the “strategy and structure” of the Wallabies’ performance before the end of the year, which is the kind of thing that political parties do when they’ve just been slaughtered at an election after telling themselves everything was gonna work out fine.
Unfortunately, external reviews, when conducted by the same type of people that make up the struggling organisation, aren’t that effective.
The group stage exit from the World Cup, and subsequent resignation of Eddie Jones marks another body blow for the increasingly detached political class that make up our RA board, who have worked tirelessly to ensure that Australian rugby selectors prioritise their focus on young men from the right families and schools.
The Wallabies, who didn’t register a point in the second half against Wales, are symbolic of a greater problem across a whole range of ailing institutions in the top end of town.
From the stuffed shirt landed gentry that are driving agribusiness into a wall and irreparably damaging our river systems, to the once-great political parties who have rendered themselves unelectable for refusing to recruit women because of their dedication to ‘merit’ (birth-rites).
With a winning Wallabies side laying dormant in the reserve grades of Sydney and Queensland’s behemoth NRL clubs, the powers that be at Australian Rugby remain committed to utilising the highlight reels of four elite private schools and a couple of Kiwi Youtube highlights as their ‘grassroots program’.
With Rugby Australia now running out of cash, and stretching the talent of actual footballers across 5 equally troubled and pointlessly decentralised domestic clubs, it seems now is not that time to ask anyone who lives in Mosman to provide answers the game’s current woes.
Instead, fans are urging the game’s powerbrokers to recruit elderly Greek and Lebanese immigrants, who have the skills to run RA like the small business it is.
Now with a tight budget – and the drastic need for the type of entrepreneurialism that doesn’t appear on the conveyer belt that runs from the GPS schools into Sydney Uni Rugby, into Martin Place – it seems it might be time to hand over this organisation to the Jiddis and Papous that know how to stay in the black without overextending themselves in changing economic climates.
