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'It's got to be how we back up': Rennie wants more from Wallabies following famous draw

Coach Dave Rennie and Michael Hooper of Australia speak to media after the Bledisloe Cup match between the New Zealand All Blacks and the Australian Wallabies at Sky Stadium on October 11, 2020 in Wellington, New Zealand. (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

One of the most pleasing things for new Test coach Dave Rennie was the disappointment in the Wallabies changeroom after their 16-16 Bledisloe Cup draw in Wellington.

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Smashed 36-0 by the All Blacks the last time they played in New Zealand and without a win there in 19 years, a draw would have satisfied most Wallabies teams of late.

But Rennie, who took over from Michael Cheika after their World Cup disappointment, described it as a missed opportunity given their second-half dominance.

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Wallabies | Bledisloe 1 2020 | Post match press conference

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Wallabies | Bledisloe 1 2020 | Post match press conference

With three more Tests to play in the series, the next at Auckland’s Eden Park, the Wallabies only need to win their two matches at home to take the Bledisloe Cup trophy back after an 18-year absence.

“There’s three Tests left – we had to win three anyway and now we have to win two – so from that perspective it’s not a bad result but we’re certainly not satisfied with the draw,” Rennie said.

“We’ve had three weeks together and we will get a lot better but we know the All Blacks will be a lot better next week too.

“We’re disappointed as we had a chance today and didn’t take it so we’re certainly not celebrating in the change-room.”

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The Kiwi coach has restored confidence in the players battered by years of trans-Tasman beat-downs, while the injection of new blood has also revived the Australian troops.

Their game plan troubled the All Blacks and their ability to change tactics to suit the wet and windy conditions also showed their growth.

But Rennie was quick to highlight areas for improvement.

Apart from their game management in not going for a match-winning drop goal, he said their discipline – giving away 14 penalties – and work at the breakdown needed to improve

“We saw last year where the Wallabies hammered the All Blacks in Perth and then lost 36-0 the following week,” he said.

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“For us it’s got to be how we back-up.

“What I liked seeing is the disappointment in the guys in the change-room.”

Rennie’s home town of Upper Hutt is just out of Wellington and he said his New Zealand-based family were now on board with the Wallabies.

“It was pretty special for me personally as I had my three sons and partners, two grand-daughters, all wearing yellow and that impressed me.

“But in the end it’s about the team and I’m really proud of the effort.”

– Melissa Woods

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AllyOz 23 hours ago
Does the next Wallabies coach have to be an Australian?

I will preface this comment by saying that I hope Joe Schmidt continues for as long as he can as I think he has done a tremendous job to date. He has, in some ways, made the job a little harder for himself by initially relying on domestic based players and never really going over the top with OS based players even when he relaxed his policy a little more. I really enjoy how the team are playing at the moment.


I think Les Kiss, because (1) he has a bit more international experience, (2) has previously coached with Schmidt and in the same setup as Schmidt, might provide the smoothest transition, though I am not sure that this necessarily needs to be the case.


I would say one thing though about OS versus local coaches. I have a preference for local coaches but not for the reason that people might suppose (certainly not for the reason OJohn will have opined - I haven't read all the way down but I think I can guess it).


Australia has produced coaches of international standing who have won World Cups and major trophies. Bob Dwyer, Rod Macqueen, Alan Jones, Michael Cheika and Eddie Jones. I would add John Connolly - though he never got the international success he was highly successful with Queensland against quality NZ opposition and I think you could argue, never really got the run at international level that others did (OJohn might agree with that bit). Some of those are controversial but they all achieved high level results. You can add to that a number of assistants who worked OS at a high level.


But what the lack of a clear Australian coach suggests to me is that we are no longer producing coaches of international quality through our systems. We have had some overseas based coaches in our system like Thorn and Wessels and Cron (though I would suggest Thorn was a unique case who played for Australia in one code and NZ in the other and saw himself as a both a NZer and a Queenslander having arrived here at around age 12). Cron was developed in the Australian system anyway, so I don't have a problem with where he was born.


But my point is that we used to have systems in Australia that produced world class coaches. The systems developed by Dick Marks, which adopted and adapted some of the best coaching training approaches at the time from around the world (Wales particularly) but focussed on training Australian coaches with the best available methods, in my mind (as someone who grew up and began coaching late in that era) was a key part of what produced the highly skilled players that we produced at the time and also that produced those world class coaches. I think it was slipping already by the time I did my Level II certificate in 2002 and I think Eddie Jones influence and the priorities of the executive, particularly John O'Neill, might have been the beginning of the end. But if we have good coaching development programmes at school and junior level that will feed through to representative level then we will have


I think this is the missing ingredient that both ourselves and, ironically, Wales (who gave us the bones of our coaching system that became world leading), is a poor coaching development system. Fix that and you start getting players developing basic skills better and earlier in their careers and this feeds through all the way through the system and it also means that, when coaching positions at all levels come up, there are people of quality to fill them, who feed through the system all the way to the top. We could be exporting more coaches to Japan and England and France and the UK and the USA, as we have done a bit in the past.


A lack of a third tier between SR and Club rugby might block this a little - but I am not sure that this alone is the reason - it does give people some opportunity though to be noticed and play a key role in developing that next generation of players coming through. And we have never been able to make the cost sustainable.


I don't think it matters that we have an OS coach as our head coach at the moment but I think it does tell us something about overall rugby ecosystem that, when a coaching appointment comes up, we don't have 3 or 4 high quality options ready to take over. The failure of our coaching development pathway is a key missing ingredient for me and one of the reasons our systems are failing.

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