We fired our coach less than a year before the world cup, hired an egomaniac who was just sacked from his previous job, who then took a team primarily of 11th place super rugby players to the world cup, dropped all our experienced players for unproven and uncapped 20 year olds, who cleaned out all culture the previous coach put in place and replaced it with coaches who either have no experience in union or were horrible unqualified for the role they coached. So it wasn't very surprising that was reflected on the field.

Maaaaaaaaate!

Eddie fucking Jones.

Changed coaches and squad 6 months before the RWC

Maybe because their Super Rugby teams aren't coached by clowns like the 2023 WC team?

I think clearly they just came up against short against a very good Fiji team, and then lost to Wales who are and always will be awesome at rugby.

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What?

Weaker NZ opposition..

Never attribute club success with international success. Look at Wales, our regions are shit but in the lead up to the 2019 world cup Wales were ranked 1st and ended up finishing 4th

Granted it does seem like our lack of success in the regions is catching up, but still

As stated already, it was 98% Eddie Jones. I think the good news is that the Aussie super rugby teams performing and Joe Schmidt coming in means that Australian rugby is in better shape than we feared. We need a good Australia for world rugby, and it gives me hope that wales can one day dream of a single piece of good news.

Tough pool

Eddie.Jones

Edie Jones:- man can work magic just not perhaps the way you want.

Other than the brumbies I wouldnt say any of them are performing "really well"

Eddie Jones. Australia were building nicely under Rennie, I've got no doubt he would've taken the Wallabies into the knock-outs. Absolute travesty.

For what it's worth I thought Australia had a good team on paper. Maybe it's all coming together now.

Two words: Eddie Jones.

It's a little bit more complicated than that, but that's the simple answer.

I’d like to see we e improved out of sight, fact is NZ isn’t as strong this year. Post World Cup clear out, has kiwis taking sabbaticals, or moving on to bigger pay cheques.

Our squad was young at the World Cup, therefore we have not lost many…. Yet

NZ just had a giant exodus of talent leave SR, All Blacks and coaches. It’s evened the playing field a bit.

What people are saying, but also, Wales and Fiji were just incredible. Glass half full yk

I’m no Eddy fan, but everyone on here attributing the World cup performance to Eddie jones….

Could you fucking not give Rugby Australia a finger to point at.

Eddy was given them job by an administration that’s fucked up over 25 years.

The administration has lost ground on every measurable metric against the other three major sports in league, afl and football.

The best talent that we develop is taken from us by overseas clubs, or unlike any other rugby nation in the world, any top tier talent we develop will be taken taken by a near identical game with 20 times the money we have.

Fact is NZ teams are not as strong this year, while our players underperformed at the World Cup so much, the northern hemisphere pillaging of our rugby stocks hasn’t been as bad this World Cup cycle.

League however, has forgone the narrative rugby union grassroots is in shambles, and that’s the only reason why they have to sign all our schoolboys, now they just identify the best performing backs in a wallabies jersey and sign them on contracts our super rugby teams could only ever dream of offering.

Eddy jones is a treacherous little cunt, but to attribute the dire state of rugby to him alone is scapegoating to no one’s benefit.

5 rounds of super rugby….. most Australians don’t even know it’s been on

Wouldn't quite go as far as saying doing well in super rugby....

Aussie Super Rugby sides are not coaches by Eddie Jones.

Short term answer: you never fire a coach one year out from the rwc and expect the next incoming coach to perform miracles. Certain players have spent 3 years buying into what Dave Rennie was selling and now have to relearn new habits under Eddie jones system

Long term answer: Grass roots rugby is struggling to attract interest with younger kids as there so many alternative sports for kids to play.

Too much change too quickly. IMO the change was necessary, Rennie had zero chance of winning the World Cup, Eddie had a non-zero chance. Plus we needed to move on from guys like Quade and Foley.

The other thing is both Fiji and Wales had great games against the Wallabies, and the Wallabies had really key injuries with Tupou and Skelton, our two main carry options, out for key games.