The score was humiliating and painfully revealing. Last week, the Australian U20s were thrashed 73-17 by South Africa at the World U20 Championship. For a sports-mad country, that result may be the perfect metaphor for where Australian rugby finds itself in 2025. Outthought, outmuscled, and becoming irrelevant on the global stage. Their club’s performances so far are just a continuation of where Australian rugby has found itself in recent years. The Wallabies failed to get through the group stages of the 2023 World Cup, with humiliating defeats to Wales and Fiji. Those performances were the end result of years of mismanagement, poor coaching decisions,…

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