KEY POINTS:
SYDNEY - It's time for tubby bye bye.
That's the message from would-be Wallabies coach Ewen McKenzie who believes he can fix Australia's front row woes if given the top job.
Labelled "Teletubbies" and "absolutely crap" by English hooker Mark Regan at a lunch for the Hong Kong Sevens on the weekend, the normally unflappable Waratahs coach weighed into the debate today, admitting the remarks had stung.
"I'm sure he (Regan) had a smile when he was saying it, but if that's the perception of the Wallabies or the Wallaby scrum or people in the team, then obviously that's annoying," said McKenzie, who will be interviewed for the Australian post this Friday.
"Being an ex-Wallaby, that sort of pisses me off when you've got people out there that think about the Wallabies that way, so the only way you can get out there is you've got to fix the perception.
"You've got to get out there and get stuck in and you've got to work on many fronts.
"You get a perception overnight, but it might take five months to get rid of it, so you've got to work pretty hard.
"I'm prepared to put my hand up and say I'm keen to get out there and start the process of changing that and I don't think it's something that's going to take four years."
McKenzie, whose Australian record of 51 Test caps for a prop was equalled by his New South Wales charge Al Baxter in the World Cup quarterfinal loss to England, said scrummaging was as much a mental as technical exercise.
Widely credited with improving the NSW pack, McKenzie also pointed to the job he'd done as scrum coach with a relatively internationally inexperienced set of front rowers - Nic Stiles, Fletcher Dyson and Rod Moore - as assistant to Wallabies coach Rod Macqueen in 2001.
"The point was those guys were in their first year in, they had just replaced Andrew Blades, Richard Harry and Michael Foley the year before, so you can get there," McKenzie said.
"You get the technical part right and the strategy and understand that there is no part of the game that any one team dominates worldwide.
"You're going to have strengths and weaknesses in the game, play to your strengths and obviously try and avoid your weaknesses, so that's where the strategy comes in.
"I'm confident these things are fixable."
McKenzie conceded he probably wasn't the favourite for the job but didn't necessarily see that as a bad thing.
"I just see it like the Melbourne Cup, the favourite rarely wins, so I haven't been the favourite the whole time, so maybe I'm a chance," McKenzie said.
- AAP
