Foley Not Ready To Pack It In

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday January 12, 2008

Rupert Guinness

WALLABIES forwards coach Michael Foley has passionately declared he wants to keep his position under new head coach Robbie Deans so he can finish the job he started when he joined the national side.

Foley, appointed in 2006 along with backs coach Scott Johnson under former Wallabies coach John Connolly, believes he has not had long enough to rebuild the Australian pack into a world force.

The 1999 World Cup-winning Wallabies hooker is still on contract with the Australian Rugby Union. As is Johnson, who is yet to announce his intentions, while defensive coach John Muggleton has been a full-time ARU employee since 1999.

But that is no guarantee they will be kept on if the ARU allows New Zealander Deans to pick another line-up.

When asked if he hoped to be retained by Deans, Foley told the Herald: "It would be excellent if that could happen. I haven't spoken to Robbie Deans and [he] is yet to decide on how he will compose his coaching staff.

"[But] from my point of view the first training session to the [World Cup] quarter-final was 16 months. You would like another year to really shape things in a way that people could say there is a tangible difference on a consistent basis."

Foley said England's demolition of the Wallabies pack in their World Cup quarter-final loss at Marseille last September exposed the challenge still facing them.

"Last year people were excited by the improvements we made and then, rightly so, were extremely disappointed by what we did in the quarter-final," he said. "We can say that we still have a long way to go, but we are in the process of getting there."

However, Foley does not regret public remarks by him and his charges in France that their aim was to become a dominant pack in world rugby - and that they believed they could achieve that. If anything, he is glad they did.

"We were ambitious, in a sense, of saying that we have the goal of being the best forward pack in the world," he said. "But that should be the goal of every player, every unit in every team.

"It's not something that has ever been discussed or thought about from an Australian forward's point of view because in the last 10 years we have tended to duck and weave a bit in the true contest for forwards like the scrum.

"The guys in the Australian rugby community, the front-rowers, are saying we don't want to do that any more.

"They are saying, 'OK, it's going to be tough. There will be times where you will get a good learning experience. But you want to be dominant in those areas."'

Foley also applauded the probable introduction of experimental law variations (ELVs) in Test rugby, starting with this year's Tri Nations.

Their use has already been approved by the International Rugby Board for Super 14 (with six laws) and in Australia for club rugby in Sydney and Brisbane - and hopefully in the Perth and Canberra competitions, too.

And yesterday, the IRB announced all the ELVs would also be trialled in South Africa - and at all levels.

Some people, including Deans, expect the ELVs will alter the contest at the scrum. But Foley begs to differ.

"People are anticipating that potentially the defensive back row might loosen up," he said. "But I think the defensive back row will be committed to a big contest early.

"The contest for the scrum will still be there. And if you are not a strong scrum, people have the options when it comes to free kicks of taking scrums and to try to expose you in that way."

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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