Rugby Union

Got real vibes of dumping your girlfriend because someone hotter became single

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I suspect it’ll be a director of rugby/consulting style approach with the Wallaroos where Jones does big picture stuff and allows coaches to do the grunt work. Given the resources required and travel of both programmes, I doubt he will do much hands on coaching with the women’s side especially games.

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I was going to say. If i was coaching the Wallaroos I wouldn’t be happy to have Jones hovering over my shoulder 100% of the time.

I think it is a great get especially with the 2027 and 2029 Rugby World Cups coming to Australia. We want to give us the best chance of winning both tournaments at home.

Potentially Jones having some input into the Wallaroos program will be significantly advantageous - especially around lifting the standard and moving towards professionalism, but the way both games are played have different approaches and this is where Jones possibly has limited benefit.

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At least they were honest and said this was the case.

Its such a shallow act that it’s not hard to work out whats going on.

At some point they’ll realise rugby and Melbourne is never going to work, drop to four teams and then they will have a much better (more battle hardened) player pool to pick from.

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But less players then

Less players, yea but the bar to Super selection becomes higher. Australia won the RWC with three pro teams.

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When was that though? We’ll never be able to compete with NZ.

  1. A golden generation of Wallabies players.
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And the game is different now. We’d be better off with more pro players (and allowing them to play wherever they want and still be a Wallaby) than less.

It was hoped that going to 4 (and then 5) franchises would help build a better (and bigger) pool of players, but it hasn’t exactly worked (not that I think its the fault of having 5 SR franchises through)

Rugby pathways are still severely limited and very much aimed at private schools/GPS (where the sport has traditionally been successful), getting players outside of this has been tough going and it feels like Rugby has given up. It’s also not helped that many talented kids are often picking another sport (often League) over Rugby as their chosen path too.

Depth has always been an issue, even back when there were 3 franchises - one was successful and the remainder languished, it certainly wasn’t helped that we were playing against two other nations’ franchises where their depth often exceeded the available positions.

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If rugby union is going to be successful in Australia, it must break the mold and recruit more players from government-funded public schools, no matter how hard it is.

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Choirs performing at international rugby matches at the Principality Stadium (in Cardiff, Wales) have been banned from singing the Tom Jones classic, Delilah.

The stadium said it would no longer be performed by choirs after removing it from half-time playlists in 2015.

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Brisbane misses out due to the FIFA WC.

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