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ARU CEO Pulver Says Giving Ewen McKenzie Free Rein To Hire, Fire Staff Was Mistake

Australian Rugby Union CEO Bill Pulver "conceded his decision to make the Wallabies coach answerable only to the chief executive played a role in the crisis that ended with Ewen McKenzie's stunning resignation in Brisbane on Saturday night," according to Georgina Robinson of THE AGE. One day after accepting McKenzie's resignation and 12 hours "after blaming the media for the Super Rugby title-winning coach's demise, a more reflective Pulver said he took some responsibility for the turmoil gripping the code which left McKenzie deeply aggrieved at his treatment, Kurtley Beale's career in tatters and the ARU facing potential legal action from former business manager Di Patston." Pulver said that Patston, who is at the center of a serious misconduct allegation against Beale, "was not at fault in the saga, and said he had allowed McKenzie to assemble his own team of support and coaching staff with very little oversight." Pulver: "In essence I allowed Ewen to hire all of the off-field team around him and to essentially control the on-field environment he was working with." It is more than two years since Pulver began a massive overhaul of the ARU's high-performance program, "beginning with the departure of high-performance boss David Nucifora, who sat above then-coach Robbie Deans in a role that spanned all elite teams, and abolished the job altogether." When McKenzie was appointed after the Wallabies' series loss to the British & Irish Lions eight months later, Pulver "installed him in a CEO-style model that gave the shrewd coach and former world cup-winning Test prop total control over the Wallabies program" (THE AGE, 10/19). In Sydney, Wayne Smith wrote Argentina may provide a solution to McKenzie’s recent problems "with the former Wallabies coach being approached to coach the Pumas at next year’s World Cup." McKenzie, who "stunned Australian rugby by dramatically resigning" as the Wallabies coach less than an hour after his side's one-point loss to the All Blacks in Brisbane on Saturday night, insists the first he heard of the Kurtley Beale-Di Patston ­texting incident was when she alerted him soon after the ­Wallabies’ arrival in Buenos Aires three weeks ago. It is not known whether McKenzie is interested, "but happily for Australia, which had trouble enough with the Pumas in Mendoza a fortnight ago without them having inside knowledge, the earliest the Wallabies might encounter them at the World Cup would be at the semi-final stage" (THE AUSTRALIAN, 10/20).

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