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It’s not a lack of playing talent that is holding back the NRL, it’s a lack of genuine coaching talent. In a competition of sheep, Craig Bellamy has been the shepherd for many years now.
Often imitated yet never duplicated, Bellamy’s tactics have become the blueprint for the rest of the NRL.
Over the past two rounds I have noticed yet another innovation which will probably become common place.
The Tigers charged to the 2005 grand final off the back of some scintillating attacking players, fuelled by lightning quick play the balls.
Craig Bellamy recognised that slowing down these play-the-balls was key to dominating a game of rugby league.
With this; wrestling went from strictly men in tights to including men in purple jerseys as well.
In 2013, wrestling is cited as a cancerous blight on the great game of rugby league, thanks to every other club looking at what the Storm have done and desperately trying to make it work for them.
The ‘block’ plays which are so common place were popularised by the Melbourne Storm. The Storm used their three key playmakers – Smith, Cronk, Slater – and created a shape which allowed them each to have an opportunity to find a chink in the defence.
A player out the back, a forward running at the inside shoulder and one of the most dangerous players in the competition with the ball in hand.
It was just a matter of making the right decision; out the back if the defence has the short ball covered, short ball if the defence are focused on the man out the back or straighten up and run through the line if the defence is sliding too hard.
And it has of course been adopted by every other team in the country.
I doubt Bellamy completely invented this style of attacking manoeuvre, but he undoubtedly tweaked it to perfection and brought it into twenty-first century rugby league vogue.
The difference is Bellamy tweaked this play to suit the players he had, while most other coaches tweaked their players to try and fit into the Bellamy play.
A notable exception is Des Hasler.
Recognising he had some average halves but very talented ball-playing forwards at Canterbury in 2012, he allowed his front rowers to do a lot of the ball-playing.
This not only created an attacking threat which many teams were not used to facing, but allowed the forwards to make extra yardage down the middle when they chose to run as the defence were in two minds thanks to the passing threat.
This also allowed the Dogs best attacking weapon, Ben Barba, to thrive off offloads and short passes through the middle of the ruck.
It comes as no surprise that a coach like Hasler, who chose to develop a game plan to suit his team rather than simply imitate another coach, was the one that faced off against Melbourne in the 2012 grand final.
Like the block plays, the Storm didn’t invent the inside ball.
But using Cameron Smith’s speed out of dummy half and Billy Slater’s pace, they created an out-ball/in-ball move which has worked wonders for them.
It works with Smith eliminating the markers, Cronk drawing the sliding defence and Slater flying through the gap created.
Most teams have tried to imitate this move with limited success – some even use it with props!
The latest move is yet another creative play by Bellamy in a competition dearth of creativity.
After many seasons with the focus on ‘hot lines’ and ‘straightening the attack’, Bellyache has found a way to utilise the ‘cold’ line, or trying to run around the outside shoulder rather than cutting back into the inside shoulder.
The Storm have recognised the tight, jamming in defence most teams use to defend scrums and used it to create a move which gets a flying winger going at pace getting around the opposite winger.
The player is moving at such speed after starting their run to create the extra man from the centre of the field that the defenders simply can’t keep up once the key man, usually Sisa Waqa or Justin O’Neill, receive the ball.
It created two tries against the Warriors and one against the Raiders, with the flying flanker either passing to his opposite man or driving over the line himself.
This may seem like an innocuous play to some, but it is truly a demonstration of why Craig Bellamy is one of, if not the, best in the business. There is no side that utilises the cold line or the scrum in this way, but don’t be surprised if there’s plenty attempting it in 2014.
Rest assured Bellamy will have a new ploy by then anyway. Craig Bellamy, the hipster of the NRL coaching ranks.
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