Alan Jones believes the Wallabies are far from a lost cause, writes Roy Masters.

At 3am on November 8, the day before Alan Jones was to meet with a selection panel charged with interviewing candidates for the vacant Wallabies coaching position, the No.1 rating Sydney broadcaster took 20 minutes to fire off to a stenographer his blueprint for resurrecting rugby union in Australia.

The material was typed on six quarto pages and posted to Pat Howard, the ARU's high performance manager, for distribution to other members of the interview committee.

Having responded to the committee's request for information to complement the interview process, Jones then waited for word from the ARU. Twenty-two days later, he's still waiting.

An abbreviated version of Jones's submission follows:

1 In General

"We are a fairly imitative game. What the national side does, so do players in grade, at schoolboy level and at the juniors. The result is a game played more on the ground than in the air, which begins to look like a poor man's version of rugby league, and the public, to say nothing of the players, are increasingly concerned about where this might end.

"The worst thing to happen would be if it materially affected the wellbeing of the game, which would be unable to sustain long-term problems on the revenue front."

2 A General Response

"A shorthand version of what I see as the answer is to focus more on maul ball without in any way diluting the importance of the ruck. I believe there is a lot of confusion in the game about the general role of the forwards.

"The forwards' job must be to get opposition forwards out of the back line. That can only be done with maul ball, and it can be done at lineout, kick-off, drop-out and in general play. It may involve artificially creating a maul off, for example, a big player like [Lote] Tuqiri, and from there changing direction in attack. There are very few games where any athlete is productive on the ground."

3 Skills

"There is far too much emphasis on strength and conditioning, important though they are, and the continuity skills are sacrificed. [Berrick] Barnes scored two tries in his maiden Test, simply because of continuity skills. Conditioning is a function of running and speed. Both of these can be done while practising skills work.

"The aim of the coaching team must be to give the player the skills required to meet the variety of situations they'll confront on the paddock. If we give them the tools, they'll be able to do the job because at the end of the day, you can't be overly prescriptive. They must play what's in front of them."

4 Negativity

"We are playing a negative game. The kick-off is classic. There's a tendency to kick to the opposition. We should be kicking behind them and our movement to the ball … must be a foot race. The same applies in defence. The aim is not just to end their movement, but to end it on their side of the gain line.

"A kick-off is about the ball and the players going to the same destination via a different route and arriving at the same time. The same applies at the breakdown. We tend to take a step back and drift into position for the next phase. That means if we're in possession, we're not supporting continuity and if they are in possession, we are conceding on their side of the gain line."

5 The Coaching Team

"The coaching team is too big. When you have such a staff load, everyone expects training time. That can contribute negatively to the end result. Some of the skill sets that will have to be executed are often slow, laborious and time-consuming. It may well require an hour or more to get it right. You can't do that if someone's got 15 minutes here and then you go to something else in 15 minutes."

6 The Lineout

"We must play what I call '10-second rugby' at the lineout. We must be disciplined to recommence play within 10 seconds. They can't organise their defence in 10 seconds but they can if we give them 30. We need to know that if the forwards are to pull their forwards in, then a seven-man lineout from ball at the top which engages their seven is the ball that we can use for the backs because of the dramatic space between us and the defence.

"Now, of course, they may not match us with seven. If that's the case, we'll put the ball down and drive it up the paddock. But we must practise doing that and we must be able to read it. If tall men are lifting tall men, any of this can be done quickly."

7 Kicking

"Players must be taught that in possession they have a range of options available to them … that's why the backs and forwards have to have interchangeable skills … so kicking is an option but it's also a massive skill. Too much of our kicking is up the middle of the paddock and it's too early. They've got three fullbacks.

"We have to practise kicking in such as way that their options are narrowed. They must be receiving close to the touch line. They therefore can claim little of the touchline when they kick because of the angle, and that provides an advantage to us."

8 The Scrum

"We seem to be wanting to do as the English have done it, and that is we drop our shoulders and then 'scoop up' the scrum … But we are a young pack, and that's a good thing. I believe that [Greg] Holmes and [Rodney] Blake, [Guy] Shepherdson and a young loose-head that I saw in the APC, Ben Alexander, have real ability. Holmes and Blake have excellent continuity skills. Holmes seems very fit, Blake not so fit. Holmes seems quick. I'm impressed with Shepherdson's defence and his fitness, though his continuity is not flash. And that kid Alexander, wherever he comes from, is tough.

"However, these boys are not yet as strong as the people whose scrummaging they're seeming to imitate … I always find, with respect, that if you spend too much time doing this in the gym, these fellows get a bit soft in the head. You've got to learn to wrestle and angle and react by physical contact. You've got to practise the scrum like a wrestling contest. My preference on what I've seen would be to set it early and feed quickly. At the moment, our reaction times are slow."

9 Continuity

"Our continuity has become recycling off the ground. The opposition often don't contest it and then they get in the way of our attack. The one enduring image that many have is of Australia in possession and someone like Nathan Sharpe, good player that he is, receiving ball at inside-centre and then you go straight to the ground.

"We have to maintain continuity by having midline support in every phase of the game … If we've got ball in hand, in the air and our players are in motion, then we have some of the most creative and destructive players in the world, backs and forwards … all that kid Barnes knew was to support the football. That's all [John] Thornett's team did in South Africa in 1963. They had no coach.

"Two final points. The greatest Wallaby strength must be selection, because we've got a stack of talent. Once we get the selection right, then the jersey is its own motivation. I'm really impressed about the quality of the young people … and there's depth. And there are senior players who still have the fire, the commitment and the performance.

"Two, succession planning. I hope it would be generally conceded that wherever I've been in sport, in the performing arts or in broadcasting, I've worked strenuously to bring young people through. I would want to be doing that immediately with the coaching and support team and the playing strength.

"I've always found goodwill exists where change is understood and explained. You then mobilise that goodwill, but that requires leadership. No person is going to be in this job for a long time. He gets stale and so do the players get tired of the same conductor. I would want to discuss with the high performance manager his views about succession. After all, his goals and the head coach's goals are the same - the high performance of Australian rugby players and the presentation to the world of a side that yields to no one. I find that challenge both exciting and achievable."

Since Jones's submission and interview, the ARU has entered a period of splendid isolation, principally caused through the hospitalisation of chief executive John O'Neill but also to wait until the announcement of the All Blacks coach, expected next week.

O'Neill's preferred choice is Robbie Deans, a contender for the New Zealand post. O'Neill is an admirer of Deans's teams, and it must be said that Jones's blueprint would work in New Zealand, where the ball skills of forwards are superior.

Some would say Jones has over-estimated the talent in Australia, where schools are responsible for the physical and skill development of players who lag three years behind their rugby league cousins. But Jones clearly has faith in what he has seen and faith may be the most important ingredient. The problem is that the game already has one messiah in O'Neill, and two may be more than any code could handle.