Australia don’t have a style of rugby – Campese

David Campese admits Australia didn’t deserve to get through to the knockout stages of the Rugby World Cup, but does not want to lay the blame for their exit solely on coach Eddie Jones.

Speaking on the most recent edition of The Rugby Paper Podcast, the former Wallabies great also discussed how he believes Australia have lost their identity as a rugby playing nation.

Campese feels that Jones was always being dealt a difficult hand in trying to prepare Australia with just over half a year and only five fixtures ahead of the tournament getting underway, but also believes his gung-ho approach was not necessarily what was needed at the time.

“Why should Australia get through after playing so badly?” He said. “It’s just not right.”

“You’ve got to deserve your place. It’s a World Cup. You should prepare four years for a World Cup, Australia prepared for seven months. In some ways you can’t blame Eddie, and others you can.

“The problem was, [when he joined] seven months out he had no idea about Australian rugby. He came back from overseas, went back to his school in La Perouse and said: ‘I want every kid here to play running rugby.’ A month later he said: ‘Running rugby’s dead in Australia, we’re going to kick the ball away to win.’

“Why didn’t he, when he came back to Australia, get some people together and say ‘Guys, what is the situation on the ground, where are we?’

“Then he could say ‘We’re not where we should be,’ and he’d be justified to take a young team away and not to compete in this World Cup. But you know Eddie, he loves the limelight, and ahead of the first game in South Africa he said it was going to be better than the America’s Cup, that it was going to be fantastic and all that.”

The once most prolific try scorer in test rugby, now third on the all-time list, argues the expectation Jones put on his young players was unmanageable and feels that leadership was lacking for Australia in the tournament, a view which was echoed by a friend and his own teenage son who attended both of Australia’s key games.

“He puts so much pressure on the young players, that’s what Eddie does,” he explained. “He’s done it all around the world. It’s ok if you’ve got experienced players in the squad, but he didn’t have those players and look what happened.”

“I spoke to someone I know whose son plays for the Wallabies and he was recounting the game against Wales. Wales came out altogether to warm-up, as a unit, and got into high intensity work, the Wallabies came out in dribs and drabs. Wales went back to the dressing room altogether, the Wallabies sort of wandered off. He said to his wife: ‘We’re in a bit of trouble here.’

“My son was over there, watching in the grandstands and he felt that in the Fiji game they wanted it more, and for him that the Welsh game was just sad. He’s a 16-year-old coming through the ranks, he’ll be scarred for life unfortunately.”

Despite the exit, Campese did not lament the Australian Rugby Union’s decision to remove previous head coach Dave Rennie from his post a year out from the World Cup.

Although Campese did not criticise Rennie’s results, despite the New Zealander narrowly losing three of his last four tests in charge, he feels that it is right Australians coach their national team.

Rather than this being about a sense of national pride, which it often can be when someone wants a coach of their own nationality installed in their national team, it is a question of identity for Campese, who believes that by appointing non-Australians the country has moved away from the style of rugby that made them so successful in the 1980s and 90s.

“I wasn’t sure about Dave Rennie,” he added. “I don’t agree with a foreign coach in Australia, the All Blacks will never get a Wallaby to coach. South Africa will never get an Australian or New Zealander to coach the Springboks.

“Once upon a time, when we played, we all had a different style of playing rugby. Australia had great backlines, we played running rugby, did the switches, the loops, running different angles, all that fancy stuff.

“Dave Rennie was good, but the thing that disappoints me is he didn’t want to know about Australian rugby, he wanted to play Dave Rennie’s rugby. We’re Australians, and we’ve ended up with no style at all. We play like everyone else.

“We used to have some fantastic backs, individual backs, a bit of flair. Counter-attack used to be our biggest strength, and we can’t counter attack at all anymore!”

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