'You need to look outside': Former skipper sends message to Rugby Australia
SPOTLIGHT: Stephen Moore has urged Rugby Australia to learn from a “pretty unfortunate 12 months” and not be afraid of the prospect of appointing a foreigner as the next Wallabies coach.
The former Test skipper said the code now had a chance to reboot after the ousting of Chairman Hamish McLennan and the exit of coach Eddie Jones following their historic pool-stage World Cup exit this year.
He said thorough processes were needed at RA after some “strange decision-making” led to uncertainty around the direction of the code.
“It almost became untenable with both those guys,” he told AAP of Jones and McLennan.
“It’s good to be out the other side of that.
“It was a pretty unfortunate time, the last 12 months for Australian rugby.
“It doesn’t mean the change is finished; it still needs some regeneration of the board to get the best people involved to take the game to where it needs to go.
“I’ve seen some green shoots there in the last few weeks; starting to talk about the things that matter rather than having a crack at other codes.
“Rugby’s still facing great challenges but fundamentally it’s a great game with a lot of upside if we get it right.”
Moore argued it was a good time to be in the market for a head coach and nationality should not have any bearing on the decision.
“We just need to have the best coach and it’s no secret we haven’t been great at developing our own coaches,” Moore said.
“So you need to look outside; it’d be wise to cast a wide net and pick the absolute best possible.
“If that’s [New Zealand’s] Joe Schmidt that’s great, if that’s [Ireland’s] Ronan O’Gara that’s great and if it’s [Australian] Dan McKellar that’s great too.
“We need to go through that process and we didn’t do that with Eddie and it probably came back to bite us.”
