NRL great PAUL GALLEN writes exclusively for Wide World of Sports and will appear on Nine's 100 FOOTY% on Monday night, debating rugby league's big issues alongside Phil Gould and James Bracey. Watch from 10.50pm AEST!
I thought this season might be different.
With everything that's going on in the world, with the potential financial catastrophe faced by the NRL, I wondered if there might be a slight reprieve for coaches.
The clear answer is no. A quarter of the league's coaches are gone and a couple more remain under pressure.
And at each club that's sacked their coach - Stephen Kearney at the Warriors, Dean Pay at the Bulldogs, Paul Green at the Cowboys and now Paul McGregor at the Dragons - the common denominator is that the coach actually seemed well-liked.
What a tough job it is.
McGregor's exit from St George Illawarra seemed like a classic case of the message wearing off. Since taking the job in 2014, he'd made the finals just twice, ran 15th last season and they're 11th right now.
It's a results-driven business and their results were going down. There's some talent in that Dragons team but for whatever reason, McGregor was no longer the man to get the best out of them.
He's just had his time there. It was time for the relationship to end, with a clean cut.
That's similar to Green's situation in North Queensland. He'd also been there since 2014, had delivered plenty of success, yet it was time for change.
I feel his roster had waned, to the point where it wasn't top-eight material. The Cowboys are in a bit of a rebuilding phase.
He's been a great coach; the club's first premiership winner. It's not a matter of being a bad coach when your time's up and the players simply need a fresh message.
Kearney hadn't had the success of Green but actually had his team playing some good footy around the time of his sacking. It was a weird one, especially given the extreme circumstances he and the Warriors were working under.
They were 2-4 when the decision was made; still with a chance this season and having produced an amazing performance against the Dragons where they completed nearly every set.
But rugby league can be funny. Afterwards it's pointed out that Kearney had a certain high-profile manager, then a few weeks later a player with the same agent leaves the club. You don't know if those types of rumours are true, whether that was a genuine factor or not.
Kearney seemed to still have his dressing room, the respect of his players. You saw their reaction when he left. To their credit, and to Todd Payten's as their caretaker coach, they're still fighting hard in a season where they've made enormous sacrifices to keep the NRL in business.
Pay, too, seemed to be liked by his players. Sometimes things just don't work out. That's footy.
Pay, Kearney, Green and McGregor were all working with far less talent than clubs like the Roosters, Storm and Raiders. That's a major factor.
We don't know what type of coaches they were internally. The players and the people there are the ones who know best.
But these don't seem to have been obvious cases where the coach lost the dressing room. It's just a matter of not being able to effectively get their message across to the players and the players being unable to execute the plan.
I never went through that situation. I always liked my coaches and wanted to play for them. There wasn't ever a time where I thought my coach just couldn't coach our team anymore.
But you do see it in the NRL and you definitely hear murmurs from players; 'He can't coach' or 'he can coach'.
To be honest, I don't buy into that very much. A lot of coaching just comes down to personalities and whether they're able to get on, rather than a person's football knowledge and coaching ability.
And again, having a decent roster is a major factor. Good players help make good coaches, and vice versa.
You've got to be a bit of a crank, I think, to be a successful NRL coach! You've got to be an authoritarian, when I look at some of my old coaches and others who have had long careers in the game.
But you've also got to be flexible. It would be a really hard role because you've got to be tough on your players, stand your ground and say, 'No, we're doing it this way or not doing it at all'; yet also smart about listening to them and doing what they want occasionally, at the right times.
It's a demanding job where man management, particularly these days, is all-important. You've got assistant coaches working hard on the specifics of attack and defence and communication with certain players, but the head coach has to oversee the lot and the buck stops with him.
Only 16 people in Australia get to be NRL head coaches and when they get there, only a few succeed long-term. You've certainly got to be a strong character.
You get extraordinary coaches like Wayne Bennett, Craig Bellamy and now Trent Robinson who can reinvent themselves and stay at a club long-term. Others, like Michael Maguire, are perhaps coaches for a set period.
Madge won a premiership at South Sydney, then moved on a few years later. Now we see a similar situation with Green at North Queensland.
Sometimes NRL clubs just need a clean slate. Not even an unprecedented season like this one has changed that reality.
STORM'S REMARKABLE RUN CONTINUES
I listen to Billy Slater talk about the Melbourne Storm and for such a successful club, their secret is so simple.
Everybody buys in. Everybody knows their role and stays in their lane. Everybody goes out there and does their job to the best of their ability.
If you do that, you keep getting picked. If you don't, you're out.
It's a basic philosophy that has been so effective for Melbourne. Work hard, know your role, get your job done, stay in the side. All clubs talk about having those values, that culture, yet Craig Bellamy's team is the one that puts it into practice every single season.
Just look at Thursday night, beating the reigning premiers 24-6. Yes, the Roosters have injury problems but the Storm were without their two best players in Cameron Smith and Cameron Munster, and they still totally dominated the game.
Christian Welch and Jesse Bromwich were great in a powerful start. So too was Brandon Smith.
This is a guy who hasn't played a lot of hooker for the past couple of years and this season has had to listen to all the speculation about Harry Grant possibly being favoured to take over Cameron Smith's No.9 jersey. Then look at how he plays when given a chance to start.
He's zinging 20-metre passes out in front of his halves to put them on the run. They're the little things that most fans don't notice. If that ball is just half a foot behind where it should be, the halfback can't catch it on the run and dig straight into the defensive line to cause an overlap on the edge, because it takes away that split second.
Brandon Smith has hardly played hooker for two years, is better known for his running game, yet steps straight into that position and delivers outstanding service. That's where all the work at training shows up and that club's long-held reputation is that no one trains harder than Melbourne players.
Brandon Smith's defence was also wonderful, as it always is. He was tenacious. And you could say that about every Storm player, when they faced up to the back-to-back premiers minus their own two biggest names and won in dominant fashion.
It's a credit to that club. Jahrome Hughes is another prime example; a classic Melbourne Storm player.
Halfback is the most scrutinised position on the field, he's a makeshift No.7 without the side's two dominant playmakers in Cameron Smith and Munster, and he's out there doing an outstanding job.
I've spoken before about times when Cameron Smith has played halfback, such as when Melbourne played the Roosters last month. Let's be honest - he caught and passed, and it wasn't until he moved back into No.9 and Hughes went to halfback that the Storm's attack went 'bang'. Hughes attacked the defensive line and scored two second-half tries, including one of their late ones in a 27-25 win from behind.
His running, passing and organisational skills are great. I put much of that down to the coaching and what Billy Slater says.
When the Storm step on to the field, every player knows their role inside out.
That's why Melbourne have been so good for so long under Bellamy.
from WWOS https://ift.tt/3kVhcFM
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment