Attention Australian Super Rugby players: Dave Rennie knows what he wants and it’s over to you to prove you can deliver it.
The new Wallabies coach has spent the last 10 days travelling around Australia’s four franchises, meeting and greeting the players and staff who will hopefully set in motion the beginnings of a blueprint he hopes will have success later this year.
For the players, who return to Super Rugby from Friday, the message is clear: Be fit. Be adaptable. Be prepared to work. And behave.
And for those whose professional rugby takes another step up this weekend, Rennie had this: “I think there are some really good kids coming through in this country … if some young fellas have good seasons, then who knows?”
When Rennie addressed the Australian rugby media in person for the first time at last week’s Super Rugby launch, it was hard not to be impressed with what he had to say.
He wasn’t promising miracles, but also won’t use his late arrival into the Wallabies camp as an excuse for poor performances firstly against Ireland and then in the Rugby Championship. No, Rennie will instead take on a pragmatic approach that will rely heavily on his assistants, who will be on the ground between now and the first Test against Ireland in July.
Just how each Super side is defending will be a focal point for assistant Matt Taylor, while Rennie seems to have a more holistic game strategy in mind rather than the singular fly-or-fall approach of predecessor Michael Cheika.
“From a decision-making point-of-view, we’ve got to play what’s in front of us; we’ve got to play conditions and we’ve got to apply pressure and try and turn pressure into points,” Rennie said. “And that means there’s a balance to how we play and how we attack.
“Defensively, obviously Matt’s been coaching in the northern hemisphere so we’ll look to implement a bit of that. But what we can’t do in the first Test against Ireland is try and introduce lots of new things; so Matt will spend a lot of time with the four Super sides getting clarity around how they’re all defending and then we may want to get to a certain point but we might have to do that gradually. I’ll say there’s a lot of work to be done between now and July.”
And then there’s the issue of kicking, so often a sore-point when it comes to Australian rugby and a legion of fans who, according to Cheika anyway, had little interest in the Wallabies adopting a more conservative approach.
“I’m not going to go to a kick-and-defend game; maybe call me naive but that’s not what we’re going to do. I’d rather win our way. That’s the way Aussies want us to play,” Cheika said after Australia’s quarterfinal loss to England.
Rennie clearly has a different take.
“In the end you’ve got to play the conditions,” Rennie explained. “We want to kick smart. So there’s a real balance to a game I think; we still want to play territory and apply pressure; still want to play what’s in front of us and we want players with the skill-sets to do both and at times you’ve got to be brave.
“But I think kicking to tactically shape defences; if they’re narrow you can chip one to a winger, if they’re up high you can drill things long and so on … obviously there’s been a lot made of the fact they didn’t kick a lot in the World Cup.
“But you’ve just got to have balance to your attack. I think if you never kick, the opposition put 14 in the front line and it’s hard to run around them; you’ve got to shape the D, if you kick smart they’re going to have to put someone else in the backfield and it creates space to attack elsewhere.”
For the four Australian fly-halves who start this weekend, it is clear what Rennie is after: Adaptability.
The experienced Matt Toomua has already signalled his intention to wear the Wallabies No. 10 jersey, but Rennie’s remarks about the nation’s generation-next should also resonate for Will Harrison, Noah Lolesio and Isaac Lucas who start for the Waratahs, Brumbies and Reds this weekend.
And for every player with Test ambitions in this new Wallabies era, there is a message of responsibility and respect.
“What I want from our guys is that we’ve got to earn respect and we’ve got to earn respect through how we behave; how we interact with the communities and then how we perform,” he said.
“And I think ultimately if we’ve got a group of guys who are working hard for each other, prepared to spill blood for each other and do that for 80 minutes, then we’ll earn respect. If we’re good in the community but don’t fight for each other on the field people won’t respect; if we play good footy and behave poorly in public people won’t respect us.”
With a clear indication of what their new Wallabies coach is after, the path to Test selection for Australia’s Super Rugby players begins this weekend.