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Richard Graham Goes, Reds Set for Upheaval

Richard Graham

The Reds’ embattled coach is on his way out, and that could just be the start of the changes for the struggling Queensland franchise.

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Richard Graham walked out of Ballymore today after overseeing one of the great declines in Super Rugby history. Yes, he walked out, but it was the Reds board that opened the door – a board that is about to get a major shake up of its own.

According to sources close to the team, Graham has been a dead man walking since last season, when interim Chairman Damien Frawley presented a report to the board that recommended Graham be relieved of head coaching duties before the end of the 2015 season. That report was blocked at the time, but any pushback has, this year, evaporated faster than the Reds’ season hopes.

Moreover, Frawley – a board member of the Reds since 2013 – has made no secret of his wish to undertake more cleanout work in the organisation. Current CEO Jim Carmichael may well be looking over his shoulder, given the fact the Reds boasted crowds of 34,000 in the 2011 and 2012 seasons, yet on Saturday struggled to reach half that number at Suncorp Stadium.

The board will meet on March 19, at which point it is understood up to four positions on that board will be contested.

Graham’s struggles to get the necessary buy-in from the team are not new. Rugby Pass has discovered that a number of high profile players had in recent seasons voiced their concerns about Graham to the board. Not every player revolution is justified, but given the subsequent sacking of the coach, it seems those concerns were both prescient and wrongfully ignored.

So where does this leave the team? Matt O’Connor, who has extensive experience in European Rugby with Leicester and Leinster, has been appointed interim co-coach with Nick Stiles. O’Connor has been the attack coach at the Reds, while Stiles has been looking after the set piece.

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It looks likely that the Reds board will allow O’Connor and Stiles to continue in the role at least until the end of the season. O’Connor will be under the most scrutiny given the former Brumbies player and one-cap Wallaby’s attack plan has so far netted one try and just 16 points in the first two rounds of the 2016 season.

Stiles enjoyed success with Brisbane in last season’s Australian domestic NRC league with insiders wonder whether that success was entirely attributable to coaching or the fact the Brisbane side boasted more full-time professionals than any other side.

Whatever the relative merits of O’Connor and Stiles, and regardless of what happens at the crucial meeting on March 19, the Reds board’s first priority must surely be to give its coaches – interim or otherwise – the peace of mind to build a rugby programme again.

As one notable Queensland rugby identity said, “Queenslanders don’t like hanging around with losers. If this team wants the fans back, they had better start winning.”

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J
JW 5 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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