Turning green shoots into gold: the man behind the scenes in Wallabies’ revival

After the Wallabies’ dismal World Cup exit last year, Rugby Australia needed help. The men’s side was coachless and clueless. The women’s team was also coachless and in active revolt at the largesse lavished on the men’s game. Australia’s sevens teams needed calm and cohesion leading into the Paris Olympics. The Melbourne Rebels were heading to the gallows and the other Super sides were at loggerheads.

The job called for a human octopus: a firefighter to douse the bin fires Eddie Jones left behind, a psychiatrist to nurse shattered players and officials back to health, a peacemaker to connect the warring parties at state levels, a gardener to nurture the green shoots of the game into lush fields of talent, a headhunter to scout the finest talent for the pathways into the men’s and women’s teams across XVs and sevens. Most of all, a resolute leader to point the golden compass toward brighter horizons.

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Peter Horne became The Man. “A lot of people had headaches after 2023 – it’s a year Australian rugby would rather forget,” says Horne, who hired by Rugby Australia as high performance director at the end of 2023. “The game needed a strategy and the right people in the right roles. We needed to unite… but none of it was happening. Yet Australian rugby had all these opportunities – the British & Irish Lions tour in 2025, men’s and women’s World Cups in 2027 and 2029. So how did we turn green shoots into gold?”

Speaking to Guardian Australia from sub-zero Edinburgh as the Wallabies prepare for the Test against Scotland on Monday (12:40am AEDT), Horne is every bit the big picture guy but he admits the job has been bigger than he imagined. “There were a few areas where we needed to go down the rabbit hole to fix things,” he says. “Rugby Australia was siloed – the Wallabies was the flagship so it had its own staff and that team operated separately from our Wallaroos and sevens and Super Rugby teams. We needed to connect them if we were going to reflect, learn and grow as one team.”

First, Horne had to find the Wallabies a coach after Jones quit and defected to Japan. “We’ve seen what happens when you recruit the wrong person for the job,” he says. “You spend valuable months trying to make it work and more months trying to fix it when it goes wrong. It’s a hell of a lot easier to implement a plan when you get it right at the start.” RA cast a wide net for the job but ultimately Horne’s old boss at World Rugby, Joe Schmidt, put off retirement to lead a much-touted golden era.

“Joe really cares about this team,” Horne says. “He loves coaching and likes working with people who want to get better. He talks about belief. He creates trust. He asks people to do their job and trust others will do theirs. He’s transparent – what you see is what you get. He gives people the opportunity to be the best they can be. Joe believes if you win enough critical moments then the outcome looks after itself.”

Together, he and Schmidt have created The HP Playbook, “a working document where all key stakeholders across all parts of the game in Australia contribute and everyone knows who’s accountable for what”.

“The shared vision is to win consistently at international and Super level,” he says. “The shared mission is to create a sustainable system that develops our players and coaches to be world class. Centralisation? Alignment? Yada yada yada. The reality is it’s about people connecting as a team.”

It was Horne’s idea to take a 64-strong squad on this UK and Ireland tour – a 30-man Test squad and a 34-man Australia XV of up-and-comers to get experience at international level. Before announcing the green and gold machines in Brisbane, Horne and Schmidt hosted workshops with Super Rugby franchises explaining how they’d be managing player workloads on this tour and in 2025, all while nurturing new talent. “We’ve now got a workforce that’s aligned and working the Wallabies philosophy,” he says.

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But what is, and what will be, the ‘Wallaby Way’ under Horne? “The Australian way is not the only way,” he replies. “We have a unique culture and way of doing business but I came from a role at World Rugby where I had influence but no responsibility. I had to be persuasive to direct people through high performance systems but ultimately they had to do it. Now the buck stops with me, Joe and the senior leaders team within RA. And our core responsibility is to get Australian rugby back on track.”

And the green shoots are turning gold. After exhilarating victories over England and Wales, the Wallabies will attempt to upset world No 6 Scotland this weekend to set up a shot at a first grand slam in 40 years against Ireland on 1 December. Not that Horne and Schmidt are daring to dream that far ahead. “Joe and I know success is not linear,” he says. “We’ve seen that in the last six months as results have gone up and down. But we’re building, improving every session and we’re now seeing that on game day. As much as we all want the Wallabies to win this weekend, it’s about getting better.”