Rugby Australia’s pursuit of high-profile NRL stars when its own foundations are eroding is tone deaf and short-sighted

The 15-man game is struggling, finances are strained like never before and spending like this is unwise, tone deaf, and will only weaken it further.

I’ve got nothing against Crichton personally and he has played some rugby – he went to Scots College and was named in the Aussie Schoolboys squad in 2014 alongside Izack Rodda and Izaia Perese – but at 27, and after a rough season with the Roosters, there are strong signs his best days are behind him.

The timing of this proposed deal essentially sends a signal that will be interpreted by fans as: “Rugby Australia doesn’t give a shit about grassroots rugby and has little confidence in its own pathways.“

Even if the report was planted by Crichton’s manager to create competitive tension for his client’s signature, and the bill potentially shared by Twiggy Forrest given the Western Force link, Hamish McLennan left no one doubting his stance on poaching league talent this week.

“We just need to invest in more players,” McLennan told reporters in France. “Imagine if we had five more Joseph-Aukuso Suaaliis in the squad.”

It feels like a slap in the face to the entire rugby community and this sort of reckless spending – more than $3 million between Crichton and Suaalii combined, if you believe the reports – will only erode our game’s foundations further.

If we’ve learned nothing from the painful experience of this World Cup cycle, surely it is that we need to get our priorities straight and shore up the code’s foundations. Blowing cash on quick-fix signings in a bid to achieve short-term, sugar hit wins and unsustainable growth, has got us nowhere to this point, and will sink us deeper into the abyss.

That is unless we change course.

PROTECT GRASSROOTS

Traditional strongholds like community rugby and private schools are under threat.

Community rugby needs urgent funding and resources to support good work being done by clubs in a hyper-competitive talent market. Sports like rugby league, Aussie rules, cricket, basketball and football are devoting huge resources into their grassroots in a bid to attract young talent and rugby union, if it hopes to stay relevant and competitive, must do the same before it even thinks about growth.

This will take real leadership and, as unpopular as it may sound, we need to prioritise protecting what we have. Too long have we attempted to grow the game in non-rugby areas, often ignoring where we have been traditionally strong.

That also applies to private schools, too, where sports like rugby league and AFL have moved into perhaps rugby union’s greatest nursery and used the system to their own advantage.

As Melbourne Storm captain Christian Welch wrote: “I think this has been a factor in why Australian rugby union has been struggling for a few years now with their inability to retain all the talent being produced by the Sydney and Brisbane GPS schools.”

Rugby people have to stop caring about non-rugby people’s criticism that the 15-man game is “a rich boy’s private school” pursuit. Because at the rate we are going, it won‘t even be played there. My alma mater, Knox Grammar, now has an AFL program which would have been absolutely unheard of 20 years ago.

Rugby’s heartland is under attack and we need to deploy whatever resources we have to defend it.

END THE BAND-AID ERA

The Eddie Jones experience should be a cautionary tale for the game.

I was among those who thought simply by getting Eddie back the Wallabies’ problems would be solved. But what I have learned – and I hope RA has, too – is that abandoning years of proper governance and planning for a quick ‘Hail Mary’ is wrong.

Yes, change needs to happen and fast. But for too many years, rugby union in Australia has opted for band-aid solutions rather than meaningfully addressing the core, fundamental issues confronting it.

It’s a major reason why we’re in this hole and it needs to stop. Everyone who wants to see the game thrive here again must accept that getting to the root cause of the issues and course-correcting is going to take time. That flies in the face of most suggestions I’ve heard since the Wales game – “Sack Eddie!” among them, which feels eerily similar to the many “Sack Dave!” calls a year prior – which have been half baked and unlikely to genuinely change anything.

But one thing’s for sure: our talent identification and development systems won’t be fixed by signing big cohorts of rugby league players. Imagine how far the $3 million for Crichton and Suaalii would stretch at the community and schoolboy level in terms of harnessing and retaining top young players?

The caveat here is that not all rugby league signings in the past have been a bust and someone with the youth and skillset of Suaalii could be great. That said, I have great difficulty understanding the Crichton move and it feels like another big decision being rushed through by people under pressure.

McClennan could lead the push here by eliminating the sugar hits and making the hard, longer-term calls to protect the game.

But while he keeps banging the rugby league drum, he will remain under intense pressure from increasingly sceptical fans to turn the ship around.

EGOS & CODE WARS

Imagine being Peter V’landys on Monday when he woke up to the news of the Wallabies’ heavy defeat to Wales.

“They should be more worried about their own game than calling me the ‘horse bloke’,” he might have thought.

Eddie’s quip might have been good for a giggle at the time, but I’m now realising that it’s all just theatre at a juncture when our game has no time for distractions.

Rugby can’t be about one or two people. It has to be about everyone and the game’s leadership needs to be putting all its time and energy into problem solving, not picking fights.

Rugby is a great game, with a proud history full of incredible people.

And while the present might not be great, the future could be if we focus on ourselves, fix what’s broken and prioritise what truly matters.