In mid-2022, after Eddie Jones had coached England to a 22-17 victory over the Wallabies, a punter in the SCG stands got under the skin of the Australian by calling him a “traitor”.
“Come here and say it!” Jones shot back.
Not long after that, Jones was back as Wallabies coach for a much-hyped second coming that ended in disaster after an ignominious exit from the group stage at the 2023 World Cup.
Jones isn’t the only Aussie in recent years to have raised optimism by returning to the fold in his home country, only to depart soon after. High in the Murrayfield stands plotting the Wallabies’ downfall against Scotland was another highly regarded coach, David Nucifora, who came and went just as quickly as Jones – minus the destruction.
Does Nucifora expect a similar reception to Jones in Edinburgh?
“I think they’re used to me working for the other side after all this time with Ireland, Scotland and the Lions,” he quipped. “I’m probably more closely aligned to the northern hemisphere after all these years than I am back home.”
In many ways, Nucifora’s departure was more significant than that of Jones. As Ireland’s performance director during a decade in Irish rugby, he had helped Joe Schmidt lead Ireland to the top of World Rugby’s international rankings.
Then in December three years ago, Nucifora was unveiled alongside high-performance chief Peter Horne as a special advisor to help rebuild Australian rugby.
Seven months later, he was gone, lured for a similar role with the Scots. Nucifora also wore the red British and Irish Lions tie in 2025 during their 2-1 series win in Australia last year.
Nucifora, who was asked to assist on special projects including recruitment, player contracts and pathways, was initially scheduled to work for 100 days. He completed just 55.
The playing contract system hasn’t changed and the pathways remain a problem. Rugby Australia and the Rugby Union Players’ Association have already missed the deadline for a new collective bargaining agreement.
“We parted on terms that were fine. It was mutual,” Nucifora said. “It just ended before it really got started.”
For Scotland, Nucifora has been asked to do what he did with Ireland: turn the nation into a serious contender.
“It’s overseeing all of it, all the teams, all the programs,” said Nucifora, adding his role was to “support” and “challenge” head coach Gregor Townsend. “One of the reasons Scotland was attractive is that the structure of it is even more centrally owned and controlled than Ireland was.”
Compare that to Australia, where Rugby Australia owns just two of four Super Rugby teams, the Waratahs and Brumbies, and it’s easy to see why Nucifora wasn’t sold on the job back home.
“You get to a point when you’ve been doing it for a long time, they’re hard jobs, they’re difficult jobs, you give up a lot, you’re under a lot of pressure, you take a lot of flak,” Nucifora said.
“I was never interested in taking on another role in a full-time capacity because I wanted to come back to Australia, but I took a lot of comfort from [Scotland chairman] John McGuigan when we chatted.
“I realised that one of the key decision-making principles when you go to work for someone is you need to be philosophically aligned to them in these roles, and you need to have confidence that you’re on the same wavelength because when pressure comes on, when you have a lot of external noise, [all parties] need to understand how or why you’re doing things.”
Nucifora admitted he had not enjoyed the same level of trust in Australian rugby, including his previous role as high-performance boss between 2008 and 2013.
“Nothing happens overnight and everyone wants to see things happen immediately, and it’s just not like that,” he said. It was imperative that “people know that you are putting something together or building something that is going to give them the best chance of success”.
He felt the system in Australia – which has not won a World Cup since 1999, a Bledisloe Cup since 2002 and a Super Rugby trophy since 2014 – was set up to fail.
“I’ve always indicated that the federated model is a really difficult model to achieve alignment and efficiency,” Nucifora said. “It’s a really challenging environment to do that in, and it’s no one’s fault, it’s just the way that the game was put together here.
“It does make it a lot easier in places like Scotland or Ireland where you have that level of control. It certainly comes with other challenges, but depending on how you go about it and the people involved, I think that it has lots of advantages of working in a space like that.”
One thing in Rugby Australia’s favour is the cash windfall banked from last year’s Lions series, which allowed RA to pay off its debts. The governing body will pocket another $100 million by hosting next year’s World Cup.
There is fierce debate already about how best to use money. The players’ union believes RA needs to double down on investment in its players, including emerging talent, to boost results, visibility and eyeballs. RA, however, is trying to remain fiscally responsible to ensure there are savings for leaner days ahead.
Nucifora is unequivocal. “You’ve got to put it into the development of players,” he said. That’s the biggest thing … creating something that is of an extremely high standard that players want to be a part of.
“You’ve got to invest in people, people on the ground, people to advocate for the game, whether that be development officers or in high performance … so that people know their experience in the game is going to be a positive one.
“To have performance, you need healthy participation. So the game participation level has to be healthy because if that’s healthy, you can build a performance model that will extract then develop the talent out of a big participation pool. And then the game should start to generate success.
“Don’t focus too hard on trying to win things that aren’t that important. Focus on performance, focus on quality of player, and then ultimately the Wallabies might benefit.”
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