Rollo Manning has been a rugby tragic all his life since being named after a Wallaby winger and educated at a private boarding school in Sydney, Australia. Manning has been working in publicity and public relations for 40 years, and during that time has commented on the "game they play in heaven" through radio, magazines and newspaper coverage.
As a correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Commission, he has broadcast in magazine style programs and live coverage of games. He is currently a regular contributor to www.scrum.com and radio shows in his hometown of Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia.
Manning has been contributing to eSports for six years and relishes the opportunity to express his views on the first of the two rugbies. He is currently completing work on a study of the inter play between rugby league and rugby union over the past 100 years, when league was formed as the professional arm of an otherwise purely amateur game.
Since 1995, both have become professional and the drift of players is going back from league to union. Where will it end? That is the question Manning is now asking himself.
The Aussie rugby union camp is receiving a mixed bag of messages. What is going on? Read on to find out.
The knives are out for the captain and coach of the Australian Rugby Union team -- the Wallabies -- as the team enters the arena for the second test match of its northern tour against England at Twickenham (London) this coming Saturday.
The loss to France last Saturday was the sixth loss in a row for the twice World Cup winning team, which now slumps to its lowest level of performances against other countries since 1969 when the code was being decimated by players opting for the money available in Rugby League.
The money is now there in rugby union -- so much so that the team against France included three star league converts in Matt Rogers, Wendell Sailor and Lote Tuquiri. However, even they, try as they did, could not turn the fortunes around for the visitors.
It is being said that it is the forwards that are letting the side down, giving George Gregan at half back no protection at the lineouts and rucks, thus causing his service to the backs to be clearly slower than it should be.
Gregan is again taking those two to three steps away from the ruck before releasing the ball to the backs, and this is said to be because he is fading at 34 years of age and after a world record breaking 115 test match appearances for his country.
As fans wait to see the day when wee Georgie fires, just as he did back in 1994 when he bundled All Black winger Jeff Wilson into touch in a match winning tackle at the Sydney Football Stadium, some pearls of wisdom are coming out across the air waves.
One of those was from Sydney journalist Paul Kent on Monday’s "The Back Page" show on Fox Sports when he said that to drop Gregan, even for just one game, will put the rest of the team on notice that it can happen to the best, and thus put the whole team on notice.
This strategy could work, but it is still leaving Coach Eddie Jones off the hook -- and just how much of the Wallabies woes are due to the coach, the critics are asking.
Is it possible to sack a coach just for one game? Is the coaching contract linked to a performance bonus? Should Australia be advertising on the world stage for a new coach?
These are legitimate questions and must be examined as an atmosphere of relaxed euphoria has surrounded the Wallabies since their miraculous rise to the final of the 2003 World Cup and that dramatic victory against the much fancied All Blacks in the semifinal. The fact that they lost to England in a nail biter has been forgotten as just getting there was good enough for many.
If there is a fault at present it is in the hierarchy of the Australian Rugby Union where the change at the top replacing John O’Neill with nice guy Gary Flowers has been the key change that has produced this disaster of the moment.
O’Neill had his detractors and he was not the most popular guy with everyone, but he got results and saw Australian Rugby (as the CEO) through the most successful era in history.
Flowers is the true diplomat, nice to everyone, careful with his words and a real diplomat. But that has not got the results and one wonders whether this "nice guy" approach is the wrong one when it comes to ripping into coaches and players calling for the ultimate performance.
The game against England this Saturday will be a turning point. Beat England and the knives will be put away, but lose, and they will be out in force. Let’s hope that the critics set their sights higher than the coach and the captain and include the third "C" -- the CEO and ask Flowers to account for the role he has played (or not played) in trying to put a bomb under the present playing team and ignite a spark.
Twickenham will be a milestone -- can they do it? This scribe thinks "no" until the top really has a change, as well as the team.