Rugby: Top Australian coaches meet in Sydney to find ways to topple All Blacks

Michael Cheika converses with Mick Byrne and Western Force coaches. Photo / Getty

Australia's top rugby coaches are in the midst of a meeting to try and bring down the All Blacks.

The meeting, which was convened by ARU high performance heads Ben Whitaker and Rod Kafer, saw Michael Cheika and the Wallabies coaching staff in attendance, along with the coaches, football staff and high performance bosses of all four Australian Super Rugby teams. The mens and women's Aussie sevens programs were also in the room.

Their goal - to overcome the All Blacks and return Australian rugby to the top of the world.

It comes at a critical time for Australian rugby, after their Super Rugby teams failed to get a victory against New Zealand opposition all season, and the Wallabies were dispatched twice in succession for a 15th straight Bledisloe Cup defeat.

As a result, Whitaker said there was a "real consensus" in any case that the best way for Australia to begin to turn the tide against New Zealand was to work together.

"I think there is a real willingness and motivation from everybody here to open up and share so they can all be better," Whitaker said.

"The competition isn't here. Ultimately the competition is outside, it's overseas. For everybody, whether it be Super Rugby, sevens or Wallabies. We had a great example (of sharing) earlier this year where we basically shared training load and playing load data for all of our Super Rugby players, to all of our Super clubs. They agreed to that with us."

Whitaker said there had been a close look at New Zealand's successful aligned system.

"We've looked at it pretty closely and I think at the end of the day, they've got a level of co-ordination through structure that supports them," he said.

"I think you've got to create a system that enables collaboration. You can't just hope for collaboration or talk about it. You've got to have a system that enables it."

After the dark clouds of the 2017 Super Rugby season and another straight Bledisloe Cup loss, Whitaker said the growing unity in Australian could serve as a silver lining.

"One of the metaphors we've used is maybe we're sort of a little bit low in the pool at the moment but we've got a great opportunity to push off the bottom and shoot through to the surface," he said.

"Again, that's easy to say, we've got to action that now."

- Daily Telegraph