Rugby: How Australia plan to catch New Zealand

High-performance director Ben Whitaker has played down talk of a "summit" as the ARU plots to overhaul its coaching development program in a bid to close the gap on world champions New Zealand.

Whitaker, Wallabies coach Michael Cheika and national skills coach Mick Byrne will later this month rack the brains of 1991 World Cup-winning mentor Bob Dwyer and the legendary Dick Marks before engaging other great minds.

Marks masterminded Australia's highly successful coaching pathway in the 1970s, 80s and 90s and Whitaker admits the ARU need a more uniform approach.

"We've chopped and changed in the last five years, eight years etc and I think everybody acknowledges the need to come together and look at a targeted approach over a time frame and you don't deviate from it," Whitaker told AAP.

"We run a coaching development program nationally, which I don't oversee, nor does Michael Cheika. We have an involvement, but we don't oversee it.

"That's nationalised so every state union picks up that plan and model and they deliver it in their regions in their states.

"So this is more to say if we were to shift some of the focus and these sort of things, how did we do it previously in the national coaching plan, which was constructed a little differently to how we have it today?"

Whitaker insists the looming meeting of the minds is anything but a summit - which its been dubbed - and has been in planning with Dwyer and Marks for some time, certainly since before Australia's five provincial franchises lost 17 from 17 Super Rugby matches against New Zealand opposition in 2017.

"In my diary it's a meeting. It just happens to have more than two people in it," Whitaker said.

"One of the things that we do regularly, and we certainly don't put it out publicly, is use various people internally and externally to test and guide strategy.

"This is not abnormal. It's topical, clearly it's timely, but it's been blown out a bit.

"Timing around other things going on probably led it to being talked up a bit.

"They'll sit in a room with myself, Michael Cheika and Mick Byrne and give us some experiences.

"It'll be a great couple of hours. I'll need to keep the stop watch on a few of them because it could through to middle of the night."

Whitaker is confident that with the right changes implemented the ARU can help restore the glory days to Australian rugby.

"I see better than hope. I see belief," he said.

"We've been there before. We've got an outstanding head coach, outstanding staff both here and at the Super teams.

"If we had to be super critical, we'd say (a lack of) alignment would be an issue and there is strong belief that we have the potential to get back and win."

-AAP