The Roar
The Roar

Advertisement

What Michael Maguire has to do as the new referees coach

12th December, 2017
Advertisement
Michael Maguire preaches a brutal form of rugby league. (Photo: AAP)
Expert
12th December, 2017
56
2048 Reads

What should Michael Maguire and Donald Trump both have in common? They should each have limited terms.

In case you haven’t caught up with the news from Monday evening (thanks to a late night Facebook post from Greg McCallum I was able to break it on my humble little website), the former South Sydney coach has been named Tony Archer’s replacement as coach of NRL referees.

Archer moves sideways into a newly created national head of officiating role.

In the past, the NRL has flip-flopped between a former referee running its officials and an ex-coach. Neither philosophy has clearly been successful enough to stick with. Former refs who’ve had a go include Michael Stone, Bill Harrigan and Archer himself. Ex-coaches have included Peter Louis, Robert Finch and Daniel Anderson.

Are we stuck in a rut? Are we condemned to always attract the same amount of criticism, regardless of what we try, how many technological aids we enlist and how capable the men in charge may be?

To my way of thinking, there’s a mistake in terms of over-arching philosophy.

We wouldn’t put the same referee in charge of the same team each week until they ‘got it right’, would we?

So why do we bring in a referees coach, encourage him to stamp his ‘style’ on the competition and subject 16 teams to that style until he is ousted?

Advertisement

I don’t want a referees coach to have ‘style’. I want him to coach his underlings to enforce the rules as best he can and stay on top of the sneaky trends of modern NRL coaching. He is not like a club coach – nothing like it. He does not win or lose each week.

Michael Maguire smiles. What's he up to?

(Photo: AAP)

He’s like the commissioner of police.

Do we really want the way the law is enforced on the street to be subject to who is sitting at a given desk on a given day? I would say we actually want the opposite.

We want consistency, divorced from personality.

Because of this, I reckon that when the NRL referees coach comes into the role, he should know he is only there for a year or two. It’s not about performance, it’s about efficiency. He’s a public servant.

Once we take the ego out of the role – and I’m not accusing Madge of having an ego here, just speaking generally – there’ll be one less thing to argue about. We’ll not be pinning mistakes on the leadership as much because the leadership will be an anonymous revolving door.

Advertisement

We’ll pin mistakes on the individuals who make them because that’s actually who is responsible for most mistakes, everywhere.

Far too many positions in rugby league are held by people whose focus is keeping their job instead of doing what’s right for the sport, no matter how unpopular.

I’ve always said more people in the game need to behave like they don’t care if they have a job tomorrow.

For the referees coach, he should know with absolute certainty he doesn’t.

close