I bleed Maroon
International Rep
- Apr 17, 2013
- 14,952
- 18,714
Here's the hypothetical: Kev has just been flicked for whatever reason, mayhe he made Billy captain and dropped Reyno for Aaron Whitchurch, and you are on the shortlist for the Broncos coaching gig. You're standing in front of Donuts with weak gutted dogs overhead projector lit up behind you and you're explaining to him what you would do to make the club consistently competitive again, and also what sort of support you will need from the club in order to get there.
First things first, you gotta swallow your dignity and acknowledge that playing in the "spirit of the game" is sadly not in your best interests as a club, and the reason teams like Melbourne and the Rorters have stayed at the top for so long (apart from subtle favoritism, or not so subtle in Melbourne's case) and Penrith find themselves flying high nowadays is, they foresee the NRL introducing some braindead rule change with easily discernible loopholes before it happens, which is probably an attempt to remedy a different loophole created by an earlier brain dead rule change, and they adapt to manipulate that change as soon as it's introduced and drill it hard into their players during the off season, before the other teams cotton on to it (or never do in a lot of cases) and then proceed to take advantage of that ignorance while they still can to get the comp points on the board and the form rolling.
Doing this takes a significant amount of nuance and logic in footy matters to identify these loopholes quickly, so you're gonna need some quality assistants around you who get what it is you're trying to achieve and will stay in lock step with those ambitions despite any personal grievance they might have with the methods. Stephen Kearney is a good right hand man on his own merits but he doesn't keep his job by questioning Bellyache's decisions. He keeps it by finding his own ways to make Bellyache's decisions work out as envisioned.
Once you have gained significant momentum, you must do everything you can to keep it, but also within reason to not burn out the players (sorry Kev I love you but, guilty as charged). Prudent team selections, no bullshit attitude at training, little patience for complacency or tomfoolery, a decent apparatus set up in the shadows to cover for your players off field behavior (Melbourne wrote the rulebook on this one. If there aren't any headlines, there aren't any distractions), and above all, sensible use of the salary cap. The spine is the be all end all of footy sides in the modern game, especially in and around the ruck, so Hooker should probably take precedent even over a good halves pairing, but they are certainly not to be neglected either. Having a gun fullback is handy but players like Dylan Edwards, Nico Hynes, Scott Drinkwater and TMM prove you don't need to have a million dollar superstar in that position to succeed. Hooker and Halfback on the other hand you absolutely do, and not just in raw skill. There is a synergy there that needs to be plugged into.
As long as the six again rule isn't going anywhere (it is, I would wager it has no more than 2 seasons left before it's quietly scrapped, but you can only play what's in front of you, and some other BS that does its best to ruin Rugby League will no doubt take its place), having a quality hooker with a good footy brain in his skull has never been more important. Fast, smart darts out of dummy half, catching tired markers out whenever possible, crisp passing out to your mates in the spine, identifying weaknesses and fatigue in the defensive line for your second rowers to target....Just relentlessly capitalizing on the already ridiculous stress the six agains are applying to the defence. Put the foot on the throat and keep it there. The Hooker playing for the side with the ascendancy early on is basically deciding the flow of the game single handedly by moving fast and getting good ball to his front rowers. All he needs from his halves is for them to make something of it on the scoreboard when they go from their own 20 metre line to the opposition red zone by the 4th or 5th tackle.....smh. The game was never meant to be this fast, but some old hacks got the shits over stoppages on TV a handful of times and now here we are so we have to live with it.
They say the line drop out is a dying breed thanks to the fear of 7 tackles (another rule that deserves the cannon), and it probably is more or less, but that doesn't mean teams shouldn't try. It's all a matter of good timing. Keep it in the holster for the first 20-25 minutes, but if you have done a good enough job of the above in that timeframe, giving away 7 tackles suddenly isn't as threatening as it might be otherwise, because the other team are already too gassed to do anything with it without a hail mary play or a piggyback six again slapped on top of it (oh hello, there it is again, excessive referee influence on the flow of the game for reasons that usually aren't even clear to the audience). After already enduring all that time without ball in hand and moving at a frantic pace, there would be nothing more demoralizing than watching your fullback getting driven back or caught in your in goal by a nice, well measured grubber kick and knowing you've gotta do it all over again, only now you're on the ropes from the outset and are sucking them in like George Rose chasing an ice cream van. So now you're physically AND mentally exhausted. Any team worth a premiership is putting you to the sword by that stage.
Finally, what does the coach need from the club? Manipulation of the narrative. The Rugby League media have an obscene influence on the code in this country; V'Landal may as well lick Lachlan Murdoch's toilet clean with his tongue, and I have no doubt clubs with their eyes open take full advantage of it. There is a reason everyone screams blue murder about wrestlemania, the NRL's talking head of the week comes out and says they're working on it, and then proceed to do everything BUT work on it. These guys can't tie their shoelaces without asking permission first, never mind run a sports competition with the power of their own convictions. Ask the two Davids, Gallop and Smith what their opinions on that point of view are.
Ned Stark lost his head because he chose the high road in a world playing by rules written to suit the needs of the low road. It's sad and it shouldn't be the case but it is, and it's well past time the Broncos started playing by those rules.
TL;DR **** Melbourne not only for all the harm they have done to the game, but for making it necessary that others follow in their wake.
First things first, you gotta swallow your dignity and acknowledge that playing in the "spirit of the game" is sadly not in your best interests as a club, and the reason teams like Melbourne and the Rorters have stayed at the top for so long (apart from subtle favoritism, or not so subtle in Melbourne's case) and Penrith find themselves flying high nowadays is, they foresee the NRL introducing some braindead rule change with easily discernible loopholes before it happens, which is probably an attempt to remedy a different loophole created by an earlier brain dead rule change, and they adapt to manipulate that change as soon as it's introduced and drill it hard into their players during the off season, before the other teams cotton on to it (or never do in a lot of cases) and then proceed to take advantage of that ignorance while they still can to get the comp points on the board and the form rolling.
Doing this takes a significant amount of nuance and logic in footy matters to identify these loopholes quickly, so you're gonna need some quality assistants around you who get what it is you're trying to achieve and will stay in lock step with those ambitions despite any personal grievance they might have with the methods. Stephen Kearney is a good right hand man on his own merits but he doesn't keep his job by questioning Bellyache's decisions. He keeps it by finding his own ways to make Bellyache's decisions work out as envisioned.
Once you have gained significant momentum, you must do everything you can to keep it, but also within reason to not burn out the players (sorry Kev I love you but, guilty as charged). Prudent team selections, no bullshit attitude at training, little patience for complacency or tomfoolery, a decent apparatus set up in the shadows to cover for your players off field behavior (Melbourne wrote the rulebook on this one. If there aren't any headlines, there aren't any distractions), and above all, sensible use of the salary cap. The spine is the be all end all of footy sides in the modern game, especially in and around the ruck, so Hooker should probably take precedent even over a good halves pairing, but they are certainly not to be neglected either. Having a gun fullback is handy but players like Dylan Edwards, Nico Hynes, Scott Drinkwater and TMM prove you don't need to have a million dollar superstar in that position to succeed. Hooker and Halfback on the other hand you absolutely do, and not just in raw skill. There is a synergy there that needs to be plugged into.
As long as the six again rule isn't going anywhere (it is, I would wager it has no more than 2 seasons left before it's quietly scrapped, but you can only play what's in front of you, and some other BS that does its best to ruin Rugby League will no doubt take its place), having a quality hooker with a good footy brain in his skull has never been more important. Fast, smart darts out of dummy half, catching tired markers out whenever possible, crisp passing out to your mates in the spine, identifying weaknesses and fatigue in the defensive line for your second rowers to target....Just relentlessly capitalizing on the already ridiculous stress the six agains are applying to the defence. Put the foot on the throat and keep it there. The Hooker playing for the side with the ascendancy early on is basically deciding the flow of the game single handedly by moving fast and getting good ball to his front rowers. All he needs from his halves is for them to make something of it on the scoreboard when they go from their own 20 metre line to the opposition red zone by the 4th or 5th tackle.....smh. The game was never meant to be this fast, but some old hacks got the shits over stoppages on TV a handful of times and now here we are so we have to live with it.
They say the line drop out is a dying breed thanks to the fear of 7 tackles (another rule that deserves the cannon), and it probably is more or less, but that doesn't mean teams shouldn't try. It's all a matter of good timing. Keep it in the holster for the first 20-25 minutes, but if you have done a good enough job of the above in that timeframe, giving away 7 tackles suddenly isn't as threatening as it might be otherwise, because the other team are already too gassed to do anything with it without a hail mary play or a piggyback six again slapped on top of it (oh hello, there it is again, excessive referee influence on the flow of the game for reasons that usually aren't even clear to the audience). After already enduring all that time without ball in hand and moving at a frantic pace, there would be nothing more demoralizing than watching your fullback getting driven back or caught in your in goal by a nice, well measured grubber kick and knowing you've gotta do it all over again, only now you're on the ropes from the outset and are sucking them in like George Rose chasing an ice cream van. So now you're physically AND mentally exhausted. Any team worth a premiership is putting you to the sword by that stage.
Finally, what does the coach need from the club? Manipulation of the narrative. The Rugby League media have an obscene influence on the code in this country; V'Landal may as well lick Lachlan Murdoch's toilet clean with his tongue, and I have no doubt clubs with their eyes open take full advantage of it. There is a reason everyone screams blue murder about wrestlemania, the NRL's talking head of the week comes out and says they're working on it, and then proceed to do everything BUT work on it. These guys can't tie their shoelaces without asking permission first, never mind run a sports competition with the power of their own convictions. Ask the two Davids, Gallop and Smith what their opinions on that point of view are.
Ned Stark lost his head because he chose the high road in a world playing by rules written to suit the needs of the low road. It's sad and it shouldn't be the case but it is, and it's well past time the Broncos started playing by those rules.
TL;DR **** Melbourne not only for all the harm they have done to the game, but for making it necessary that others follow in their wake.
