After another weekend of indiscretions, both on (Hayne headbutt etc) and off (Watts and Carney) the field, you have to wonder if the NRL club culture doesn’t have a little discipline problem.
Formula seems fairly obvious:
Young men + obscene amounts of money and attention + journalists waiting for them to stuff up = the current crop of negative attention.
So how do we solve this problem?
Well firstly, I think a lot comes down to the coach. A first-grade job is not just about winning games on the field. The best ones (likes of Bennett, Sheens etc) care deeply about the welfare of their players and play an important role as mentors and even in some cases father-figures in their lives.
You can clearly see the effect this has – when was the last time anyone from one of Bennett’s teams was involved in a scandal?
This needs to be encouraged and explicitly taught to those wanting to be coaches. Maybe, when Wayne eventually retires from full-time coaching, he could take a position as coach-mentor to the other NRL coaches.
The other part of this formula, though, is being willing to apply discipline when needed.
You can see from the examples of teams like the Broncos and the Dragons (and the Tigers and Gold Coast – two other teams with strong welfare orientated coaches) that when consistent and fair discipline is applied to small issues, it helps the players to mature and not get involved in big issues.
The NRL could do worse than go back to school and local club level to see how issues are handled.
For instance, at junior level if a player mouths off at a referee, they get sent off and may face a ban of four to six weeks.
This is in contrast to NRL level where the club may or may not cop of a fine – but the player is treated as far too valuable an asset and is allowed to play.
Similarly, at school level (in my experience) we won’t field a player in a representative team, if they are doing the wrong thing in class at school.
Now, behaviour in class does not directly link to behaviour on the field, but it demonstrates a lack of self-discipline and lack of self respect – so we act accordingly.
I have dropped players from representative games and carnivals because they’ve done the wrong thing at school – and in 90% of cases, their behaviour at school improves dramatically (at least for the duration of the footy season) afterwards.
Now, for example if one of my players had narrowly escaped a penalty for doing the wrong thing a couple of weeks ago (Carney) and then went out and did the same thing he promised not to do, then he would be dropped for at least the next couple of games.
However, he would be expected to train during that time.
Likewise, if one of my players head butted another player on the field and got sent off – firstly I would ban them from playing for a certain amount of time, secondly I would expect them to apologise personally to the other player, thirdly I would expect them to apologise to their teammates and especially to the captain and forth – I’d be trying to figure out what is going on their head that they think head-butting is a good idea anyway!
Just some ideas. I’d love to hear what other people think.
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