'It's not ideal': Chris Ashton criticises Premiership's decision not to play on

Nick Nurse is 57. He was 51 in 2019.

“Rugby won’t go down the Soccer road and hire-and-fire like it’s the Wild West. It will find the value in older coaches as time passes.”

I hope you’re right, but I still highly doubt it will ever be common for coaches to be peaking in their mid 60s. If anyone manages it it will be Rassie or Farrell - because coaches with the most longevity tend to be those who stick in one job for decades. But even so, I doubt either will still be in a top international job in 15 years time. Les Kiss is only 60 now, so he could get the Wallabies job right after Schmidt leaves - but if he keeps the job to 2031 I’ll eat an actual hat.

It’s all very different now. Sticking with fast Eddie 2 years before a RWC. Then changing tact and firing him a year before it. Don’t seem as decisive anymore.

“You’ve actually missed that Ferguson is actually a sporting paradox. 23 years at the helm and the bulk of his success was from the mid-later point of his career. It only proves experience is more important than age.”

Come on IkeaBoy - try to be coherent!

If Ferguson is a “sporting paradox”, then he obviously doesn’t prove anything.

As it happens, I don’t think he is a paradox. He was coaching at a time when experience was valued extremely highly - now it is valued less so.

“I was being polite in suggesting the comparison was not stable.”

it would be unstable if experience were not strongly correlated with age. Experience is strongly correlated with age, at least among the managers that I named.

I’d have milked it too.

Lol the GM wasn’t too bad, or am I just confused on job titles and it was the ‘owner’ who had to make the final call. But yep, that interaction was one of the keys why I wasn’t really interested in it. I never realised they were the actual moneyball dudes, I thought it was just a couple of wannabe guys trying to follow in their footsteps. That’s Eastwood for ya though!

And I’d like to see how it stacks up against the Prem which is a similarly high-scoring league.

So alligned with b) the only real option is to complain to those in control. I suspect that’s why weve seen France reneging on the practice, and you can only be left to think that if they hadn’t reneged, WR would have done something more drastic about it. Which of course would mean not just telling them to bugger off when they want to tour, it’s no one playing them (from t1 at least) at all (assuming they have no interest in scheduling match’s outside the windows, like Ireland and NZ are doing).

Then of course that means no involvement of France in the Nations Championship. Which means they are automatically the last ranked team in 6N to qualify, so the actual worst team in 6N gets to compete in it, making a mockery of the promotion and relegation WR wanted to happen between T1 and T2 for qualifying purposes. Yup, b) is just something nobody wants to happen. Well done FFR and LNR for making the tour work instead (how well is yet to be seen).