O'Neill: Deans job safe ahead of review

Australian Rugby Union boss John O’Neill has confirmed he will meet with Wallabies coach Robbie Deans on Tuesday, but insists the New Zealander’s coaching future is not on the agenda.

Australian Rugby Union boss John O’Neill has confirmed he will meet with Wallabies coach Robbie Deans on Tuesday, but insists the New Zealander’s coaching future is not on the agenda.

The Wallabies’ opening four Tests of the season provided more questions than answers ahead of the upcoming Tri-Nations tournament against South Africa and New Zealand.

Deans and ARU high performance manager David Nucifora will sit down with O’Neill to assess the side’s indifferent start to the campaign at ARU headquarters.

But while the timing of the early-season review has prompted fresh speculation over Deans’ future, O’Neill rejected suggestions the national team is in crisis.

“It’s a regular meeting, it’s been in the diary since January,” O’Neill said.

“Robbie and I talk four or five times a week so there’s nothing remotely resembling a crisis meeting tomorrow.

“It’s a mini review, we’ve had four Tests (and we need to discuss) how are we travelling, what’s good, what’s not so good, what do we need to improve and what’s the status report on injuries?

“No one should read anything into tomorrow’s meeting rather than a regular and timely review of how we’re travelling.

“It’d be fair to say that the inconsistency issue is something that worries us. We’ve got to be capable of putting teams to the sword and that’s not quite there yet. Mind you, when I list the players who are injured, they are pretty valuable and extremely valuable parts of the team.”

O’Neill, however, admits the current Wallabies lack the aggression of the great teams of the past.

“It’s all part of consistency,” he said. “Whether it’s mongrel or whether it’s (about being) very uncompromising, it’s all part of winning teams.

“If you look across the ages the really champion teams are uncompromising and sometimes they’re not just satisfied with winning, they put you to the sword.

“I mean we’ve got a lot of young blokes and the Test match arena is new to them, but if you look at some of the great Australian, All Blacks and Springboks teams, they have some very hard men in their teams and everyone knows they’re hard.

“We’re not talking about bring back the biff or anything like that but it’s a combination of all of the above and it’s (about) being uncompromising and being consistently uncompromising.”

But while he concedes the Wallabies must lift significantly if they hope to seriously trouble the best two teams in world rugby, O’Neill insists he is still a believer heading to the upcoming Tri-Nations tournament.

“We’re in this for the long haul and we’re starting to turn things around,” he said.

“Super rugby was a lot better and the expectation is that 2010 should be a very good year for us, and I haven’t changed that assessment.

“I think we’ll do very well in the Tri-Nations.

“They’ve (South Africa and New Zealand) looked very good and they are very formidable opponents – they don’t get any harder – but that’s the nature of the world in which we live and let’s get out there and beat them.”

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