When good mates fall out there is often hell to play.
This is what seems to have happened with the rugby league guru Phil Gould and Ricky Stuart, former rugby league great and now the coach of the Sharks and the Kangaroos.
Complicating the fall out, and adding tension to it, is the fact that Gould has a cult following on television and for his columns and opinion pieces in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Sun-Herald.
Gould often, and without fear, criticises the NRL and the control exercised over it and the money taken out of the code by News Ltd.
During the Super League crisis, Gould was an organiser and spruiker for the continuing dominance of traditional structures and organisation which were in a life-and-death struggle against the News Ltd takeover bid.
News Ltd is an organisation that takes no prisoners. It believes that it and it alone is the voice of rugby league. It runs a 16-page section on Mondays devoted to all the weekend’s league matches.
The Sunday Telegraph is equally replete with rugby league articles, with Ricky Stuart’s rather prosaic and mundane column being billed (in opposition to Gould’s guru status, perhaps?) as The Game’s Best Thinker.
Gould’s opposition to the News Ltd Super League struggle has clearly never been forgotten and forgiven.
Ricky Stuart was one of the defectors to Super League, and this divergence of allegiances may well be at the heart of the fallout, despite the intervening years.
When Stuart finished his distinguished playing career, Gould was something of a mentor to him as he created a new career as a coach. There was talk, for instance, that Gould was helpful during Stuart’s stint as coach of the Roosters. There is no suggestion that Stuart at the Sharks has had the same sort of support from Gould.
This brings us to Phil Gould’s hatchet job on Stuart in the Sun-Herald (4 May 2008) titled: ‘Stuart’s halfback quest littered with casualties.’
The essential argument in the piece is this: Ricky Stuart was a great halfback but during his ‘short and distinguished’ career as a coach has been a harsh judge of those who wear the number 7 jersey.
By implication, the argument makes the case that Stuart destroys halfbacks. By further implication, Stuart is not a great coach (this is my implication from the piece, I hasten to add).
Gould goes through all the halfbacks who haven’t worked well with Stuart’s methods and experimentations: Jonathan Thurston, Ben Hornby, Paul Green, Joe Williams, Craig Wing, Luke Phillips, Chris Flannery, Justin Holbrook, Brett Finch, Brett Firman, Jamie Soward, Josh Lewis, Grant Rovelli and now Brett Kimmorley.
The article started with the assertion that the Sharks ‘are trying to dump’ Kimmorley. And ended with the punch-line: ‘The Sharks may not want him but that doesn’t mean he can’t play.’
Biff! Bam! Wallop!
Phil Gould was a good player and a great coach. Ricky Stuart was a great player and (seemingly in the eyes of Gould) not a great coach.
Who is the winner in this argument?
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