Australian Rugby Boss John O’Neill will demand that the Wallabies become more ruthless when he meets Wallaby coach Robbie Deans.
The Wallabies have promised much under Deans but delivered little and Deans’ success with the Crusaders in Super Rugby has raised expectation.
O’Neill said on Monday that the visit with New Zealand-born Deans and the Australian Rugby Union high-performance manager David Nucifora was not a crisis meeting.
But the ARU chief executive added that he would address the Wallabies’ erratic performances in the June tests, which saw them beat Fiji and Ireland in one-off matches and draw a two-game series 1-1 with England.
Australia have won 18 of 32 tests since Deans took charge in 2008, and O’Neill said he wanted to see a rapid improvement ahead of the forthcoming Tri-Nations series with New Zealand and South Africa.
To do that, O’Neill said it was essential the Wallabies became more uncompromising and more hungry for success.
“That’s the sign of a good team. A winning team has to be ruthless,” he said.
“The All Blacks often don’t appear to be playing well, but they suddenly have 20 points on you. We’ve got to move into a space where coming second is not an option.
“If you want to get from a 56 percent success rate to a 70 percent success rate, you’re only going to do it by being absolutely uncompromising.
” And we’re at a point where the honeymoon is over. That’s not a threat. But the improvement in the winning percentage has to start now. You cannot say 56 percent is acceptable. It’s not.”
O’Neill said he was not planning to hand out ultimatums to Deans but wanted to know what help the Australian team needed to improve.
“If changes and improvements need to be made, Deans and Nucifora have to tell me that,” he said. “I’m not the coach. I’m not holding anyone’s hand. I’m simply saying, ‘what more do you need?’ and, ‘what needs to be done?’
“People ask me about kicking coaches. I don’t know whether we need a kicking coach, but if we do, they only have to tell me.”
O’Neill accepted that injuries had played a part in the Wallabies’ mediocre performances during its June test program but said that could not be used as an excuse.
“It is important to look at the trends and it’s fair to say the inconsistency element is something which worries us,” O’Neill told AP.
“The draw against Ireland last year, the loss to Scotland at Murrayfield and (to) England in Sydney are all games we were capable of winning, and arguably (we) were the better team.
‘We have to be capable of putting teams to the sword. That’s not quite there yet. You get the inkling we’re not far away. But it involves being able to do it consistently, with composure and to really execute the game plan.”