14th July, 2003
WHERE HAVE ALL THE REAL MEN GONE?
This is very much a valid question in Sydney when the Mardi Gras is on, but is also valid when looking at the current Wallabies. The Wallabies are perceived as being soft, lacking in aggression and being deficient in basic skills. How did this come about ? Surely you are saying to yourself this “can’t be true” we are the current World Champions. Well let’s look back and see if I can prove it to you.In 1990 when I moved to Queensland and first started playing for the Reds, Queensland had the toughest Club Rugby in the country. What was done to people lying on the ground was barbaric but also effective and very enjoyable. If you lay on the ball you were slippered from your ankles to your head by 16 churning feet, with everybody competing to see who could do the most damage.

This skill learnt at Club level was taken to the Queensland team and henceforth the Wallabies. I’m sure Simon Poidevin will attest to the number of jerseys he has had shredded at the bottom of a Queensland ruck. Well the art of rucking along with rolling mauls, attacking scrums and attacking lineouts has disappeared from Australian Rugby.When was the last time you saw a 30 metre rolling maul in Australia? The Poms pulled one against us a month ago, but that’s it, the Kiwis, Boks and Wallabies have all lost this skill. Contrast this to 10 years ago when Queensland played the All Blacks at Ballymore and the Reds did a number of big rolling mauls. Laurie Mains after the game said Queensland had the best rolling maul in the world. Again like rucking the Queenslanders would add this skill to the Wallabies mix because NSW have never had an effective rolling maul.The introduction of the Super 12 in 1996 I see as the main culprit in the deterioration of forward skills in the Southern Hemisphere. In the last month I have watched England demolish the All Blacks and Australia up front, the French shunt the All Blacks around Jade Stadium and the De Boke get done over by the Scots and Pumas.

All 3 Southern Hemisphere big guns can no longer maul, scrum, ruck or win their own ball in the lineout consistently. The Super 12 with its obsession of speed and making the game a TV spectacle has ruined our game. Just think back over the Super 12 for some common trends, some of these are:
· Refusal of Super 12 Referees to repack collapsed scrums they penalise straight away, Test Referees always repack them.
· Homogenised game with most teams committing 1 or 2 players to the breakdown the rest fanning in defence. Northern Hemisphere power game commits more forwards with emphasis on go forward at the breakdown.
· You see very little mauling in the Super 12 and no rolling mauls. Consequently players don’t have these skills to transfer to their national teams.
· The Super 12 Judiciarys, press and public treat players who ruck or throw a punch as mass murderers. In the Northern Hemisphere a certain amount of rucking and melee’s are let go, so players are used to it and end up tougher then their southern counterparts. (Don’t you think England were just a bit tougher than Australia in the recent Test)
. Common perception that a good Super 12 game is one with few scrums and few lineouts. So everyone practices for this with heaps of ball handling for the forwards fewer hits against the scrum machine. Contrast this to the North who know they are going to pack plenty of scrums because of the conditions and practise accordingly. Sad fact is that Eddie Jones does not have enough time to save the World Cup. Players need years to learn mauling and scrummaging and a whole generation has missed out on these skills. If I was Eddie Jones I would forget about soft resorts for training and try and toughen his players up somehow.

I believe Eddie should ring up Phillip Ruddock and get the Wallabies signed up for ACM riot training. Once they were trained up I would send them to Woomera then bus in Mal Fraser and some ferals to stir up the illegal immigrants. Once a full scale riot was on I would suit up the Wallaby forwards and then send them in with the first baton charge. Perhaps this will harden them up for the World Cup and maybe they will learn the joy of physical contact.

Regards
Matt (Bubba) Ryan