Deans likely to pay the price for doing the right thing
Nothing Robbie Deans has done with the Wallabies during his coaching tenure – including the series loss to the British and Irish Lions – should cost him his job.
Chances are it will, of course. But that doesn’t mean it is the right decision.
I am trying to work out whether the rampant speculation in Australia over Deans’ immediate future is because they know something we don’t – or because they want him gone and are trying to will it into reality. A less emotional reality check is understanding that, under Deans, Australia has more often than not been the No 2 rugby nation in the world, won the Tri-Nations as recently as 2011 and reached the last World Cup semis.
This has been despite encountering a string of serious player injury setbacks in a country with limited depth and also while having to take on several very powerful players who often seemed to be working against him.
He has also had the misfortune to come up against one of the best All Black teams of any era.
If Deans is guilty of anything during his time in Australian rugby, it’s of being a New Zealander and being prepared to make a stand.
He can’t do anything about being a Kiwi, of course.
But I don’t think even he anticipated just how much where he was born would be held against him for no logical reason.
Through no fault of his own, he then fanned those fires of resentment by consistently taking a stand against any player he perceived would not contribute to the team ethos he wanted. Nobody who had followed Deans’ coaching career in New Zealand would be surprised by that.
Robbie’s never been frightened of making a stand.
Think about his time with John Mitchell and the All Blacks and the Christian Cullen affair to name just one example.
I remember the hue and cry when he dropped my old mate Andrew Mehrtens at the Crusaders to open the door for a young bloke named Dan Carter. Last time I looked, that young bloke had turned out all right.
So I was hardly surprised when Deans made tough calls about blokes like Matt Giteau, Rocky Elsom and Quade Cooper. He’s done that his entire career and, more often than not, got it right.
But when you make those sorts of calls about players whom many administrators and fans alike adore, you also buy yourself festering resentment that surfaces when any of those tough calls blow up in your face.
Whatever happens in Australia, even if he moves on, Deans is not finished as a top drawer coach.
He’s too young, too smart and has too big a rugby brain to be cast aside. He will resurface somewhere and the rugby world will be better for it.
Just as it is better for the Lions having won their first series in 16 years.
And as for the tour itself? Well, look at the scenes over the past month in Aussie.
When the Lions come, they come with some of the best players and coaches in the world, a huge staff and they are backed by tens of thousands of the most parochial, rugby-loving fans you can find. It really is an invasion. And in 2017 they invade the toughest rugby country of them all, and probably with Warren Gatland leading them.
I don’t know about you but I can’t wait.