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Angst, teeth-gnashing, and Machiavellian malarkey: The Wests Tigers story

23rd March, 2017
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There is plenty of pressure on Luke Brooks this season - and on the Tigers. (Digital Image by Robb Cox ©nrlphotos.com)
Expert
23rd March, 2017
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1809 Reads

Senior playing groups at footy clubs can be pretty powerful. But it’s never a good idea for them to be too powerful.

You can’t have players making decisions on the coach and the running of the club. That’s not good business, nor is it a good business model.

Senior players are very important in terms of the footy the team’s playing and the standards at training. Senior guys drive culture. Set standards. 

But in terms of front office, as soon as players have too big an input it’s bound to fail.

Players have a job: play footy. They’re not there to decide who the coach is. That can cause big conflict.

Wests Tigers? What makes you think this is a story about Wests Tigers?

Wests Tigers coach Jason Taylor

Ha. Of course it is, after a fashion. For the saga of Wests Tigers is a case in point.
Wests Tigers have sacked Jason Taylor and kept a ‘big four’ playing group of whom one is a superstar (James Tedesco), one is the NSW Blues prop (Aaron Woods) and two (Mitchell Moses and Luke Brooks) are over-paid and over-rated in terms of the actual ‘winning’ that their footy club does.

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Ricky Stuart said it a few years ago, that halves ‘own’ the results of games, a bit like quarterbacks get the gongs in the NFL.

By that rationale, Brooks and Moses own very little. Wests haven’t made the top-eight since 2011 when Tim Sheens was coach and Benji Marshall was bopping about in the six.

The club sacked Sheens in 2012 and then Mick Potter in 2014. And people blamed Robbie Farah.

There was a famous stink on the radio when Gorden Tallis talked out of school about what Farah had told him off the record, that he didn’t rate Potter the coach.

It was bad form by Tallis – stuff like that isn’t for public consumption, even if Farah’s manager was telling porkies. And there was much angst, and gnashing of teeth.

Yet Farah didn’t sack Potter. He was asked by the Wests Tigers board about Potter and gave them his opinion, as he’d given it to Tallis. Farah didn’t decide who the coach should be. The board asked, he answered. Up to them what they did with it.

So much of the Tigers present malarkey is on the board. It’s on the board to understand the football side of it. To see Farah’s advice for what it was – advice. They have to own the decision.

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What if, at players’ behest, they’d brought in a coach who all the players loved but whose results were rubbish? Who would the board ask then? The players think the coach is a great fellah! But the job’s not getting done. 

Same if there’s a coach who blokes might not like personally, but on the field they’re tearing it up. Should the board take the players’ opinion into account then? “Sack this bloke. We’re winning but we don’t like him.”

Smart coaches will try to get the leadership group on side. Not necessarily so they can keep their job or be sweet with the board. Most of them aren’t that Machiavellian.

It’s more so the senior players can influence the rest of the team and get everyone going the coach’s way. Smart coaches seek input from the best players, and give them ownership.

But the buck has to stop with the coach. 

A coach can’t always be the players’ mate. If you’re in that role – dropping blokes, making calls – not everyone’s going to like it. That’s part of the job.

But you can’t be undermined by players deciding your future. Whether you live or die, that’s got to be a front office decision. 

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Where did it go wrong for Jason Taylor? One day he and/or Robbie Farah may write a book, and Aaron Woods might write one, too, and we may learn some of the minutiae.

But it’s the head office that has to cop the majority of the blame.

Having four of your best players off contract in the same year, all managed by the same bloke, and paying over a million dollars out of your salary cap for blokes who are playing for someone else, well… has there ever been such a state of affairs?

There’s also the increasingly-accepted wisdom that the young Tigers halves, Brooks and Moses – who held out for Big Money and then tested the market and found the market wasn’t going to spend Big Money upon them – that they aren’t, you know, extremely good.

One day, maybe. But not now. And they’ve played over 50 games each. When are they no longer boys?

Talk to old boys of this greatest game of all rugby league and the accepted wisdom of the ages is that coaches don’t make players but rather the other way around. Good players make teams – and coaches’ CVs.

But there’s a bit both ways.

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Those coaches who do have prolonged success, they’ve got something that gets the best out of blokes. If a coach can sustain success – think Wayne Bennett, Des Hasler, Craig Bellamy and there’ll be people guffawing but read this first Ricky Stuart – then he’s got the right mix of tactical nous and man-management.

There’s two sides to a good coach: there’s footy knowledge – game plans, tactics, skills, how to play footy. And there’s man-management – being able to get the best out of people with different personalities.

The good coaches understand that a rocket up Player X will fire him up but could cause Player Y to lose confidence.

Good coaching is about explaining things simply. They’re footballers, they’re not all Joey Johns geniuses.

A coach can have a feast of footy knowledge but if he can’t get it across, blokes eyes will be rolling – what’s he talking about here? 

A lot of players speak highly of Bennett and his man-management.

“He cares about blokes, he’s like their favourite uncle,” says one senior NRL man. “And blokes do respect his footy knowledge.

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“Conversely, I’ve been at clubs, and I’ve heard it happening at other clubs, where players have run out thinking their coach knows nothing.

“At one footy club, this new coach came in and straight away blokes were like, ‘Mate, that’s bullshit.’

“Players know football. You can’t bullshit players.” 

Robbie Farah playing for Wests Tigers

Players work well if they’ve given a clear role within a clear game plan. That also helps when things aren’t going right – there’s no hiding, there’s no grey area. Here’s the thing you needed to do – did you do it? Yes or no?

Obviously, players questioning a game plan and tactics, it’s not conducive to success. And if the coach isn’t as good as players were hoping for, and players start falling out with the coach and not believing what they’re hearing, they can start doing their own thing. 

So it’s on the coach to keep everyone in the same direction.

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But then you can’t flog a dead horse. If some blokes think you’ve got no idea and other blokes are doing what you say, you can have everyone pulling in different directions. And the footy team suffers.

A smart coach will make use of smart assistants. There’s a lot of knowledge around. John Cartwright is great for Trent Barrett at Manly. Ricky Stuart delegates plenty to Dean Pay (defence) and Mick Crawley (attack). One of Mal Meninga’s major roles as coach of Australia is to be Mal Meninga.

It’s about getting the right mix. Good coaches understand their own strengths and weaknesses, and can bring guys in to complement them. 

But if you ever read that a coach has “lost the change room” that usually means through man-management rather than tactics or footy knowledge, according to my man.

“Man management is the biggest challenge for a coach,” he says. “It’s about being able to understand blokes and get the best out of so many personalties. Coaching is more about how to talk to blokes than what you know about footy.”

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