by Stan’s new documentary series following the disastrous 2023 Wallabies season and France’s terrible World Cup campaign is cursed on so many fronts it’s almost black comedy.
A team reeling from a sick code, a polarizing main character who goes on to betray his side, a sad-sack interview team that gets injured or dropped, and an ugly piece of history – the first Australian team to be dismissed in the World Cup pool stages – making The Wallabies a brutal watch.
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But great storytelling doesn’t need good stories, great characters and happy endings to be entertaining. Australians love an underdog story and a glorious victory more than most.
The problem here is that the filmmakers have stuck to a cast that has lost its soul.
The Wallabies used to be the Australian team. The AFL and NRL had bigger fans and better TV figures but that gold jersey was where the nation once came together. Sorry, that was 20 years ago. Australian rugby is on the rocks, the Wallabies are bad and the Matildas have our hearts.
Of course, having coach Eddie Jones in the lead role is a bit of a hospital solution. Former coach Dave Rennie initially rejected the documentary makers. His wounded side were struggling but he was building culture and needed fierce focus and no distractions.
But when Rugby Australia overruled Rennie to install Jones nine months out from the World Cup, the documentary got the green light. “Fast Eddie”, newly promoted by England Rugby, was a big talker with a huge ego. RA needed a coach but hired a ringmaster; a circus was inevitable.
Episode one begins 145 days out from France and Jones is in full swing from the start, telling his eye-popping squad: “we’re going to change Australian rugby”; “We will fight hard and steal the World Cup”; “We will be the most visible team in Australia.” This bluster is meant to inspire, but we know that it is empty rhetoric, so it is sure to enrage fans.
Executive producer Andrew Farrell wanted to reach an audience that was beyond hardcore. “We want viewers to meet the players, to see the game through their eyes,” he says. “But given the way the story plays out, there’s a certain amount of masochism to tune in to, and given what they’ve been through in the last year – and for 20 years – fans might Wallabies have reached their threshold.”
As some players have. The personal odysseys behind the team stories usually enrich these documentaries but this main cast lacks insight – and luck. Michael Hooper has been cruelly cut from the squad, while leading players Allan Alaalatoa, James Slipper and Taniela Tupou are injured. Halfback Nic White is honest, funny and ultimately haunted, but mostly he is gnarled grumbling heads as the team goes 0-5 and then watch their World Cup campaign leave on the rails.
As this squad was the youngest ever, it was clearly a pivot for a media-savvy Gen Next player base but Jones and RA prevented it, not wanting their fresh faces to “emphasis”. Will Skelton, the unlikely campaign captain, is strangely MIA. Instead we see the gypsy Carter Gordon playing golf with his girlfriend and shaving his mullet, while the energetic young guns Mark Nawaqanitawase, Fraser McReight, Tom Hooper and Tate McDermott wait patiently.
It hurts the doco, because the staff behind the staff is so insipid. Jones’ executive team is a motley pack of mostly NRL, AFL and Euro-Rugby minds so enthralled by their boss that they refuse to challenge his increasingly slippery hold on power. Dr Sharron Flahive gets a lot of air with dry details and psychologist Dr Corinne Read, a rare voice in the chaos, is sidelined.
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There is some wonderful camerawork between training, travel and match day and some poignant moments – a freshly-injured Tupou washing his muddy boots in a dirty hut – as well as braiding heads – Jones bemoaning the game’s lack of “stacking” Australia. “. The fine edges of the glorious victory and the abject victory are also sharply focused. “Bounce the ball, pass left not right, and the Wallabies win and it changes everything,” says Farrell.
But in behind-the-scenes slick sports CDs – Drive to Survive (Formula One, Break Point (tennis), Full Swing (golf), Beckham (football) and Six Nations (rugby), The Wallabies, like the “Was RA know it’s not a possible PR exercise,” Farrell admits, “but they cut things to protect players.
Hopefully the filmmakers are playing the long game: laying down a marker before profiling the rising stars and their baptism of fire in France who will compete in the next World Cup on Australian soil. With any luck, the heartbreakers of 2023 could be the Wallabies heroes of 2027. That’s a story for the ages and a rare story Australians can get behind.
