Peter Bills: Deans in battle for Aussie future
Robbie Deans. Photo: Getty Images
Thursday July 22 2010
He must wish now that he had never said them. Just two little words -- but will they come back to haunt Robbie Deans and ultimately condemn to failure his Australian coaching tenure?
They were uttered by Deans in September 2009 to describe his Australian team following their 33-6 Tri Nations defeat by the All Blacks in Wellington and remain a painful sore that just won't heal.
Deans accused his players of "rolling over," the worst sin an Australian sportsman can commit.
And he went on: "The most disappointing thing from our perspective was, we essentially capitulated once the game was gone."
Some Australians have never forgiven him for those words. Perhaps, some of them still inhabit the present Wallaby dressing-room -- we don't know.
Suffice to say, to hear such words from the lips of an Australian would be bad enough. Coming from a New Zealander, they were hated.
A couple of Australian internationals privately expressed the view as to who did this bloke think he was.
Perhaps not coincidentally, since that day Australian rugby has lurched unconvincingly from pillar to post. Incredibly, they even lost to Scotland on their northern hemisphere tour last spring and could only draw with Ireland.
More recently, they scrambled to an unconvincing, narrow win over a weary Ireland in Brisbane, which followed losing to England, hitherto hopeless, in their own Sydney backyard.
It may seem a bizarre thing to say in this professional age, but the fate of Deans as a foreign national coach of the Australian rugby team is probably wrapped up in this delicate topic.
And on the evidence of the last 18 months, you would have to say the jury remains out on whether Deans' tenure as Wallaby coach will go down as successful or, at an estimated Aus$800,000 a year, a costly failure.
As the Wallabies prepare for Saturday's Tri Nations clash with South Africa in Brisbane, analysing the current state of Australian rugby under Deans is revealing. It quickly becomes clear that the whole Deans venture remains open to considerable doubt in some people's minds.
Indeed, rugby union in Australia at the present time seems finely balanced between potential triumph or tragedy. The pressure was heaped on Deans earlier this season when Australian Rugby Union CEO John O'Neill declared publicly that the Wallaby coach's honeymoon period "was over".
O'Neill insisted an Australian win ratio under Deans of 56pc wasn't good enough, it had to improve.
That meant that even if the Wallabies, who lost five of their six Tri Nations Tests last year, now won three of their six games in this season's competition, it still wouldn't be sufficient to satisfy O'Neill.
Yet, there appears to be an inconsistency in policy from the top in the Australian game. This week, O'Neill suddenly appeared to backtrack from his tough stance on Deans, saying: "Robbie Deans' job is totally safe until after the World Cup."
Confusion
So, what happened to the "56pc win ratio is unacceptable" line?
If there is confusion at the top of Aussie rugby, it's likely there is some lower down, with the players.
However, if O'Neill has a problem, Deans may have a greater one. The Kiwi's entire culture was rooted in Canterbury rugby.
He played, coached and enjoyed huge success there. But, apart from a brief playing spell in Grenoble, he spent little time anywhere else.
Thus, it is possible that because he has had such success within one specific culture, he has found it hard to adapt to other circumstances, especially in a different country where different philosophies abound.
Is the cultural difference the other side of the Tasman Sea proving too much for him?
It was clear from his words in Wellington last year that Deans did not understand the acute sensitivities of Australians, especially to words of criticism by a New Zealander.
This apparent turmoil will melt away as a concern if the Wallabies make a flying start to this year's Tri Nations by beating South Africa on Saturday and then tear into the All Blacks the following week in Melbourne.
But, if they don't, O'Neill's demand for a better-than-56pc win ratio looks a busted flush. And in a land where other sports already knock rugby down to number four in interest and losers are avoided like lepers, Deans and his Wallabies could have significant problems holding on to not just the interest of Australians, but their respect.
- Peter Bills
Irish Independent
