Why Is Australia Suddenly So Crap At Rugby Union?

It's been one of the bleakest years in Australian rugby union history and we're still a few weeks away from our annual Bledisloe cup towelling at the hands of the All Blacks.

A three-nil test series whitewash to start the year at home against England rates as one of the more humiliating test rugby union capitulations in Australia's playing history. We fared just as poorly in the Super 15 provincial tournament - contested among teams from New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, Japan and Argentina - where Australian teams won just three of their 26 games against New Zealand opponents. The elimination of the ACT Brumbies from the semi-finals over the weekend by Kiwi team the Otago Highlanders was the end of our last team. Should Australia go down to the All Blacks in the opening two tests to of the Bledisloe series this August it will be five straight test losses to start the year on top of our defeat in the world cup final at the end of last year. While the runner-up finish at the rugby union world cup might seem like a great result, things might have been very different had we not been handed victory by the referee in our scrappy quarterfinal win over Scotland. Should Australia do the unthinkable and beat the All Blacks in the Bledisloe next month it would the first time Australia has won a test series against New Zealand in 14 years. To put that in perspective, petrol cost 79 cents a litre the last time we the Bledisloe.

With two world cups to our name, four Super 15 Championships, three Tri Nations victories, and a history of going tit for tat with the All Blacks in our annual trans-Tasman contest, Australia was once considered a powerhouse in world rugby. So why we are suddenly so crap? There's a few schools of thought.

Wallabies coach, Michael Cheika, while not conceding that we are crap did say Australia's elite rugby union players have much room for improvement in the area of "mental resilience." Speaking on ABC's Offsiders program, he said:

"I'm a big believer that one of the big progressions for us here is more around our mental skills…

"Yes, our footy skills are important but we've shown that we have football skills. It's about bringing those really good rugby skills out every day, every week when we play in the spotlight of the game when the crowd's there and not having the fear of failure. Being really free to play the game that you know how to play and just enjoying that and not worrying too much about the result, because it will come. A big area that all our teams need to grow in is in that mental resilience. It's not always going to go well for you, so wear that and bounce back the next week."

Another area where have ground to make up is in our talent identification and nurturing programs. Unlike New Zealand, rugby union in Australia relies mostly on elite private schools for players, meaning the game's talent pool is comparatively shallow and made up mostly of the social and economic elite.

"For many, rugby union is still a class-based game – and it hasn't been able to break these shackles," writes Steve Georgakis Senior Lecturer of Pedagogy and Sports Studies, University of Sydney.

"Since the rugby split – when rugby league emerged – a class divide occurred. Union became a preserve of the middle and upper classes, so much so that its supporters were known as the "rah-rahs."

This is not the case in New Zealand where rugby union is unofficially the national sport and draws on players from all corners of the country and, let's be real, all corners of polynesia also (the Wallabies are much the same in this regard).

Wallabies great and proud First Australian man, Mark Ella has called for an end to rugby union's "colonial structure," and the adoption of coaching and talent nursing system that much more resembles New Zealand's.

"The ARU needs to embrace New Zealand's centralised system so Australian rugby has a cohesive strategy to achieve success at Test and Super Rugby level in order to lift the code's commercial and competitive edge," he wrote in his column for The Australian.

"In New Zealand, the All Blacks jersey comes first, yet their Super Rugby teams are successful, too. It is all about creating a high-­performance culture that permeates the whole system, unlike the colonial structure, which inhibits the game's growth in Australia."

On the back of a bumper Super 15 season for New Zealand teams, competition heavyweights the Wellington Hurricane's assistant coach, John Plumtree agreed with Ella, putting his nation's continued domination of world rugby down to a superior talent identification and management systems.

"It's probably to do with the depth and systems that we've got in place here now," Plumtree said.

"There just seems to be a gravy train of talent coming through here and it's structured in a way that the players can perform at a high level…And it's got something to do with coaches and management around the country that are well organised."

The Wallabies take on the All Blacks in the opening Bledisloe Cup match in Sydney on August 20.