Scotland v Australia: 'Rennie has once-weary Wallabies believing again'
- Published
Dave Rennie is back on Scottish soil this weekend bidding to maintain momentum in his Australia rebuild
Autumn Nations Series: Scotland v Australia |
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Venue: Murrayfield, Edinburgh Date: Sunday, 7 November Kick-off: 14:15 GMT |
Coverage: Live text commentary on the BBC Sport website and app |
It's just as well Dave Rennie is a gnarled character, a man who uses silence like a sword, a coach who can put the fear of death into somebody just by eyeballing them.
When, last year, the Kiwi swapped a life in Glasgow for a new existence in Australia, he took on a challenge so steeplingly high it would have dwarfed the Wallace Monument he used to live beside in Stirling.
His in-tray was a tower of grief. Even to one as deadpan as Rennie you could pick up definite signs of a nervous twitch as he pondered what lay ahead. His old job at Scotstoun came with some pressure but it must have seemed like nirvana compared to the tumult in Sydney.
In the three years before his arrival in Australia, the Wallabies had won 50% of their Tests (2017, including two defeats and 11 tries conceded against Scotland), 33% (2018) and 50% in 2019. He then had to deal with the fallout of Australia's quarter-final exit from the World Cup at the hands of England, a 40-pointer and the biggest beating they'd ever suffered in a knockout game in the tournament. There was an almighty mess to clean up.
His predecessor, Michael Cheika, had been an excellent coach in his early years but the end of his reign was an angry shambles. "Had he cared about Australian rugby he'd have left a long time ago," was the caustic comment of Quade Cooper, the Australian 10.
So, when Rennie started work that first day the list of things he had to do was gargantuan. Firstly, he had to rebuild the team - and to do that he needed to persuade his bosses to ditch their rule about not allowing overseas Aussies to play for their country unless they'd won 60 caps or more. This, he did, and Scotland will see the proof of it on Sunday when Rory Arnold (Toulouse) and Kurtley Beale (Racing 92) win their first cap since 2019 (Arnold from the start and Beale from the bench) while Will Skelton (the La Rochelle colossus) will win his first cap since 2016 (also off the bench).
Rennie has brought in other overseas Aussies in earlier games, so job done there. Secondly, he had to bring in a whole new generation. Again, he's done it. When Izaia Perese, the outside back, comes on to make his debut on Sunday he will be the 17th new cap of Rennie's brief time in charge. That's not far off a debutant for every game Australia have played on Rennie's watch.
Next, he had to get a new whole backroom team. In came Matt Taylor, formerly Scotland's defence coach, Petrus du Plessis, the one-time Glasgow scrum coach, and Dan McKellar, an ex-player at Boroughmuir. Scott Johnson, once the interim coach of Scotland and a long-standing director of rugby at Murrayfield, was also on the ticket, although reports in Australia suggest that Johnson's coat is on a shoogly peg these days.
Izaia Perese will become the 17th Australia debutant under Dave Rennie when the Waratahs back runs out at Murrayfield
Those were all controllables, rugby decisions, his area of expertise. The rest was tricky. The fans had become disaffected and almost indifferent to the Wallabies. He had to get the crowds back. Then, barely a wet week in the gig, he had to take a 30% pay cut because his employers were in the greatest financial crisis of the professional era.
After that, he had to deal with the rising discontent among players whose salaries were having to be cut drastically. Then, he had to navigate through all the vicious in-fighting at the top of the game, a level of dysfunction that reached its nadir when 11 former Wallabies captains joined forces to accuse the leaders of Rugby Australia (RA) of gross mismanagement, a move that, in part, led to the chairman of RA to talk about "abhorrent bullying" of then chief executive Raelene Castle, who resigned because she couldn't tolerate the onslaught any more.
Castle being the main driver behind Rennie's appointment, his chief ally was now gone. It was a free for all. Will Genia (105 caps) practically wept for the rugby nation. "Everybody wants to throw each other under the bus," he said.
Stephen Moore (129 caps) said "the state of the game here is so bad at the moment that it has to be transformed totally because for too long we've papered over the problems and look where that's got us".
Look, indeed. No money, dramatically diminished crowds, too many defeats, a world ranking of seven. A sports management expert lifted the bonnet and concluded that "parochialism and backward thinking are crippling rugby. It's a self-made destruction". Sports Australia published a report into the top 20 participant sports and physical activities in the country. All the mainstream sports made it. So did surfing, martial arts, netball and pilates. Rugby union did not. In the straight-talking world of Peter FitzSimons, the former Wallaby and now media commentator said rugby was "on the bones" of its backside.
Oh, and Dave, your first four Tests as Wallabies coach are against New Zealand, New Zealand, New Zealand and…hang on, let's check…oh yes, New Zealand. So get on with it. Chop chop, mate.
There are many different views on how Rennie did in his two and a bit years in charge of Glasgow. A Pro14 semi-final in 2017-18, one step further in the final in 2018-19, a quarter-final of the Champions Cup, albeit one that ended in obliteration by Saracens, and a dressing room thermonuclear blast from Rennie directed at his players. Some in the room still quiver at the thought of it. "He basically called some of us imposters," said one who witnessed it.
Rennie was one of the top coaches in the world, but the reality of his Glasgow years didn't quite live up to the hype. Maybe that was an impossibility. He lost Finn Russell (he was always strangely cool whenever Russell's name was mentioned to him, forever bigging up Adam Hastings instead) and then he lost Stuart Hogg (while trumpeting what he called a "fantastic prospect" called Rufus McLean).
Glasgow Wariorrs, led by Rennie, fell short of major silverware in the 2019 Pro14 final at Celtic Park
Other stalwarts left, too. Some doubtful characters replaced them. Rennie's Glasgow played magnificent stuff at times, but when it came to the crunch against the big boys they fell short, if only by inches to a terrific Leinster team in the 2019 final in Glasgow.
Many of his ex-players laud him for what he did for them. A handful have spoken about how brutal he could be. The criticism of his methods was heartfelt if a little feeble. Rugby at the top level is a savage game of sink or swim.
And that's what Rennie had to do when he left for Australia. The financial state of the game in Australia is still dicey but they've now got a good TV deal and some traction where once there was only turbulence. The administration of the game is still the cause of much comment, but that's not his bag.
They drew one, won one and lost two of those first four against the All Blacks in 2020. He gave debuts to 10 players in that run. They won only one game in six that year, but in 2021 Rennie has made his mark. They're on a run of five victories in a row, two of them against South Africa.
Where the Lions toiled to score two tries (close-range lunges from hookers) in three Tests against the world champions in the summer, the new Wallabies scored five in two Tests against the Springboks, all of them from his backline. On Sunday, five of the players first capped by Rennie will start against Scotland with another four of his discoveries coming off the bench and another three only there because he got the eligibility rule changed in Australia.
It's been barely 13 months since his first Test with the Wallabies and he's achieved a lot in a bumpy landscape. He's a formidable operator, almost unflappable. As he once said, rather sternly, when a Glasgow media man attempted to brief him ahead of a press conference: "This is not my first rodeo."
Rennie didn't light many fires with Glasgow, but hope is ablaze in Australia once again - and it's been a while since anybody said that of the once-weary Wallabies. In a rugby world where physicality and defence is the beginning, the end and the in-between for many coaches, here are two countries who want to play. Sunday should be a magnificent spectacle.