Nucifora

[deco]

Sorry if already posted, but this bad news story seems to have gone under the radar. I was hoping we'd be rid of him after this season.

https://www.the42.ie/irfu-nucifora-eddy ... 1-Nov2021/

You can judge his lack of success in achieving his targets here :

https://www.irishrugby.ie/irfu/strategic-plan/

[Logorrhea]

Think he's done a decent job. I've no problem with a contract renewal.

[Dave Cahill]

I think its fair and accurate to say that he has failed every metric.

4 world cup campaigns, all failures. Two out of three Olympic qualification campaigns ended in failure. Only one Irish head coach in the Irish provinces, an appointment he tried to block. Three of the four provinces further away than ever from winning any kind of silverware - and the one that is in with a shout is the one he is all but barred from. Player development is almost entirely dependant on one province, one he is all but barred from. Irish referees at elite level are now almost non existant - only one Irish referee will run a Tier 1 game this autumn and no Irish refs were at the world cup. The club game is not talking to the Union and the Womens game is in open uproar and rebellion.

[riocard911]

I think its fair and accurate to say that he has failed every metric.

4 world cup campaigns, all failures. Two out of three Olympic qualification campaigns ended in failure. Only one Irish head coach in the Irish provinces, an appointment he tried to block. Three of the four provinces further away than ever from winning any kind of silverware - and the one that is in with a shout is the one he is all but barred from. Player development is almost entirely dependant on one province, one he is all but barred from. Irish referees at elite level are now almost non existant - only one Irish referee will run a Tier 1 game this autumn and no Irish refs were at the world cup. The club game is not talking to the Union and the Womens game is in open uproar and rebellion.

+1. Well summarised!

[hugonaut]

I saw that. I was surprised that he was offered a contract renewal, only a little less surprised that he took it up.

Maybe this sounds like [or is] a facile judgment, but I thought the visual of him growing his hair long was an indication that he was seeing out his time. Personally speaking, I think his tenure has already extended past effectiveness, and I would prefer to see a different person in the role.

DC has pointed out a number of the failures of his tenure already. He has [by literally every account I've heard] been a difficult guy to work for or with. It's a job that certainly demands a strong personality, but there is a different way to do it than how he has gone about it.

[Logorrhea]

I think its fair and accurate to say that he has failed every metric.

or you could say.
1. The international side is in good health.
2. The most recent qualification for the Olympics was successful, just 5 or 6 years after beginning the program.
3. The provincial fans are all pretty much content with their coaching setups and our top class players are receiving some of the best coaching available
4. The provincial sides are as competitive, with improved player depth, than they been in the last few years.
5. Player development continues to improve across the provinces.
6. The women's team managed to lose to both Spain and Scotland, and for all their crying about people opining about their failures, have not identified what resources that the Scottish or Spanish sides received that they did not.

Personally don't know anything about the club game or referee development so would not comment.

[Dave Cahill]

I think its fair and accurate to say that he has failed every metric.

or you could say.
1. The international side is in good health.
2. The most recent qualification for the Olympics was successful, just 5 or 6 years after beginning the program.
3. The provincial fans are all pretty much content with their coaching setups and our top class players are receiving some of the best coaching available
4. The provincial sides are as competitive, with improved player depth, than they been in the last few years.
5. Player development continues to improve across the provinces.
6. The women's team managed to lose to both Spain and Scotland, and for all their crying about people opining about their failures, have not identified what resources that the Scottish or Spanish sides received that they did not.

Personally don't know anything about the club game or referee development so would not comment.

You can say anything you like, but the goals of the IRFU for its various teams and organs are written down in black and white in strategic plans (that he had to sign off on as he is responsible for planning and evaluation) and they are being misssed, in some cases wildly so.

[ronk]

The men's international game brings in 80% of revenue for 12.5% of expenses. €6.3 for each € spend

The women's game brings in 0.7% for apparently 3.5%. €5 spent for each € brought in.

The failings are real but not all goals are the same and there are some high profile successes.

I'm no fan of his but he hasn't done enough to get fired given that he wasn't before.

[Dave Cahill]

The men's international game brings in 80% of revenue for 12.5% of expenses. €6.3 for each € spend

The women's game brings in 0.7% for apparently 3.5%. €5 spent for each € brought in.

The failings are real but not all goals are the same and there are some high profile successes.

I'm no fan of his but he hasn't done enough to get fired given that he wasn't before.

Perhaps we should get rid of the person who set the goals then instead of Nucifora. It was <checks notes> David Nucif...oh

The 'some' high profile successes simply mask a multitude of low profile failures.



New deal for performance director David Nucifora as IRFU continues search for next CEO
Peter O’Reilly
Sunday November 07 2021, 12.00am GMT, The Sunday Times
Rugby union

Nucifora seems to answer to no one, and has previously placed the blame for World Cup failures on others


The IRFU is giving its performance director David Nucifora an 18-month contract extension, prolonging his role as the most influential person in Irish rugby until November 2023. An official announcement is expected soon.

If Nucifora’s performance was judged on meeting specific targets set out in strategic plans, then the Australian would be clearing his desk at the end of the current season, as per his existing contract.

But the imminent departure of long-serving chief executive Philip Browne has prompted a rethink. Losing two such powerful figures within six months would have been bad for business.

If this seems like poor planning, consider that Browne would most likely have retired last year and only remained in situ to help steer the organisation through the pandemic.

It is more than a decade since the IRFU decided to hire a performance director to streamline the running of the professional game and provide greater accountability for its success or failure. At times, though, Nucifora can appear a law unto himself.

Initially, the idea was that he should report to a professional game board (PGB), which includes an external high performance expert in Gary Keegan and a retired professional player in Eoin Reddan. Yet while Nucifora occasionally presents to the PGB, there is no sense that he is answerable to it.

Nucifora essentially gets to hire and fire as he sees fit. He makes big appointments without necessarily advertising jobs. People are removed from positions and relocated to other departments on his say-so.

He is responsible for the performance of professional teams but to what extent he is responsible is unclear. When Ireland was beaten out the gate at the quarter-final stage at consecutive world cups, Nucifora chose a management consultant to carry out a report based on interviews with players, coaches and managers. Yet the findings were not made public and apparently seen only by a select few.

Nucifora did share a few morsels with the media after the 2019 tournament. In short, he loaded the blame for Ireland’s failure on Joe Schmidt for failing to develop Ireland’s game plan and for misjudging the preparation for pool game against Japan.

Nucifora has also overseen the chronic decline of the Ireland women’s 15s, under the stewardship of his long-term side-kick Anthony Eddy. Another report has been commissioned to explain Ireland’s embarrassing failure to qualify for the world cup. Maybe there will be greater transparency this time.

Browne is currently working out his notice period until the end of the year while recruitment specialists Korn Ferry put together a shortlist of potential replacements. The first line of the job advertisement did not suggest that they are looking for anyone particularly young, thrusting and single-minded: “The IRFU is seeking a chief executive officer to provide overall guidance and support to voluntary committees . . .”

If there has been no appointment before Browne’s departure, the role will be filled pro-tem by Kevin Potts, the chief operating officer.

At committee level, the main mover and shaker now is the honorary treasurer, Patrick Kennedy, the Governer of the Bank of Ireland and, as someone in his early 50s, relatively young by IRFU standards.

Given that the cost of Covid to the Union is estimated at around €80million, Kennedy has his hands full. All departments have already been forced to make 10 per cent cuts in budget, with around 20 staff made redundant.

One department that Kennedy must surely be examining is sevens — a significant loss-maker which just happens to be an area of special interest for Nucifora.

When he created the sevens programme back in 2014, he gushed about its possibilities — as a gateway for new rugby players, as an Olympic sport with the government money that would bring.

Seven years on, you have to ask: What is the point of sevens? Briefly we were all carried along in the emotion when Billy Dardis and lads qualified for Tokyo, before they disappeared without trace.

On his rare media appearances, Nucifora likes to describe internationals Hugo Keenan or Will Connors as sevens ‘products’ but that is a misnomer. They were simply taken from academies and put onto the sevens programme.

As for the cost of that programme, well, that is mysteriously elusive information. People in positions of influence have often asked for precise figures but never received them. In the IRFU’s accounts, that number is mysteriously subsumed into a general high performance figure.

Nucifora needs to be asked a few hard questions on this. But that would be a relatively novel experience for him.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/new- ... -ns3txrcpp

[Dave Cahill]

Ant and Dave show is not living in the real world
Brendan Fanning

Discontent bubbles to the surface in week when slurry really hit the fan

November 14 2021 02:30 AM

You can only imagine the mood in the Ireland camp leading to Friday night’s Test against USA. Current stalwart Cliodhna Moloney, on social media, calls out women’s rugby director Anthony Eddy as being a slurry spreader. It was probably lost on some of the city-raised rugby community, but a good line nonetheless. Those familiar with slurry spreading know it’s not the time to be hanging out your fresh white sheets.

Next comes a couple of her teammates on Wednesday, on official media duty, and on message. This was tricky. They can hardly claim Cliodhna had stood too close to the same slurry and suffered cognitive impairment from the fumes. Neither can they say they agree wholeheartedly with her, that yer man Eddy is only happy out in the fields with a single axel slurry spreader, including centrifugal pump, hitched to the back of his Massey Ferguson.

By Thursday the girls are rallying around their hooker, who reportedly received a call from IRFU performance director David Nucifora over her tweet. If this was China their devices would have been confiscated, and then returned with connectivity disabled, but featuring a nice profile pic of the party leader. But thankfully we live in a democracy. So traffic resumed, from past and present players, and Eddy was copping slurry in every orifice as he disappeared under the wheels of the spreader.

At least captain Ciara Griffin didn’t claim the palaver hadn’t caused a smell.

Perhaps its most bizarre aspect was that outgoing coach Adam Griggs was still on the property when the incoming Greg McWilliams has for some time been in the parish.

Let’s be honest, the Griggs/Eddy combo hasn’t been a West End show. The former caused consternation with the apparent depth of his ignorance of the nuts and bolts of the women’s game here when answering media questions last April. Griggs was on a paddle board in mid Atlantic getting slapped by giant waves. Where was Ant? Where was the women’s director to calm us down and tell us all the moving parts were actually synced?

Instead he came out last Monday, the thinking being there was no point in bringing out Griggs who already has his bags packed. Gradually we realised why Eddy hadn’t come out after Griggsgate seven months ago. Sweet Jesus, you’d have got more emotional intelligence from a gatepost. For effect our colleague Murray Kinsella put the entire transcript up on The 42 website.

For those of us who missed the delivery live it was an intriguing document. Combined with the audio it presents a picture of a man climbing the stairs in the early hours, long after he was supposed to be home. Not only does he leave his boots on but he whistles as he goes.

“He’s actually a nice man when you get to know him,” says a man who has got to know him.

“He struggles to express his emotions,” said another. It would have been useful if instead of sponsors boards as a backdrop at interviews he had these character references in bold letters. He could have added the following:

First, there are only a relative handful of girls playing the game in Ireland.

Second, at the top end there is no clear distinction between Sevens and 15s, which has clear implications for the latter to develop, and that’s a mistake. Our mistake.

Third, the IRFU are on this road only because the world has decided women’s sport needs a turbo boost, in numbers and coverage, to establish some equality. This is not a proactive journey on our part.

Fourth, we actually resource the national squad pretty well, but because our playing/coaching numbers are so low, and our competitions so weak, there is no environment to produce top quality players. This – and the diversion that is Sevens – contributed to the meltdown our girls suffered in the World Cup qualifiers in Parma. That said, we would ask those players to stop talking about their grief over this.

Fifth, ask the GAA how long it took to develop girls’ football into the industry it is now. Post-Covid we don’t have the human or financial resources to turbo charge this one. Sorry.

The context to all of this is the afternoon in 2018 when the IRFU staggered bleary-eyed into the daylight to present us with their Strategic Plan. At its core was a target of 20 per cent of the game in Ireland being driven by women within five years. It was like Nucifora had fetched up to work that morning with a few sheaves of paper, asked someone to photocopy them, and then presented them to us as a plan. In keeping with the theme of looseness they were stapled together. And it was madness. Anyone with a nodding acquaintance with the game called it that way at the time.

On Saturday Griggs will sign off after the Japan game, leaving McWilliams to get his spikes on and sprint from here to the Six Nations. His is an interesting if obvious appointment. An intelligent man with a rock solid rugby pedigree McWilliams will raise hopes simply for his connection to the 2013-15 vintage, a freakish period of over-achievement in Irish women’s rugby.

So he will know the flaws in the structure, the inability of the women’s director to engage with stakeholders, and he will have heard the audible groan of so many in the Irish system at the contract extension for the ultimate boss, Nucifora.

The Ant and Dave Show has a recurring line, trotted out when targets are missed: it’s not the structure, it’s not the coaching appointments, it’s the way the players managed the stress of high performance.

Lads, that’s not slurry as we know it, but it’s slurry all the same.

https://www.independent.ie/sport/rugby/ ... 49643.html

[riocard911]

Thanks for the paywall posts, Dave. Good articles both from PO'R and BF.

[Logorrhea]

Perhaps we should get rid of the person who set the goals then instead of Nucifora. It was <checks notes> David Nucif...oh

No. You can just accept that the strategic goals of any organisation, while being part of any performance evaluation, are not the ultimate measure, and that the operational delivery against them occurs in different areas of the organisation.

You know this though.

[Dave Cahill]

Perhaps we should get rid of the person who set the goals then instead of Nucifora. It was <checks notes> David Nucif...oh

No. You can just accept that the strategic goals of any organisation, while being part of any performance evaluation, are not the ultimate measure, and that the operational delivery against them occurs in different areas of the organisation.

You know this though.

Areas he is responsible for. You know this though.

[Logorrhea]

Areas he is responsible for. You know this though.

I'm all for accountability, but just firing the most senior person you can find is so stupidly Irish.

Operational activities are delegated to coaches and playing staff. If they are under resourced, and that level of resourcing is inconsistent with the strategic goals, its his fault. If he's giving them the tools they need to succeed and they still go off and lose to Spain and New Zealand, its not.