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Let’s start with a confession. Before he became the coach of New South Wales for the 2011 State of Origin series, Ricky Stuart was among my least admired leading sports people.
He was rugby league’s Lleyton Hewitt: a log-on-shoulder perpetual whinger, a plotter trying to undermine better coaches like Wayne Bennett for plum appointments, a ranter, overly-emotional and unable to cope like an adult with defeats.
You just had to witness the over-the-top accusations against the referees when his Kangaroos were unexpectedly beaten by the New Zealand Kiwis.
Ernest Hemingway famously described style as ‘grace under pressure.’ Stuart was a prime example of the opposite, disgrace under pressure.
But give Stuart credit for a remarkable turn to his character and performance as a rugby league coach.
He admits he hates the “shit” element to his personality and says he is working to bring this under control. He should be applauded for this resolution. It isn’t easy to change a deep-rooted character trait.
The change has been real, as Stuart has clearly changed the focus of his coaching. Results and outcomes are no longer about himself and his ambitions. They are about the players and the team.
Everything Stuart has done since his tenure as coach of the Blues has been to improve the chances of New South Wales finally breaking the drought against the cocky (over-confident, perhaps?) Queensland Maroons.
There was the camp at the beginning of the season for all the possible eligible candidates for the Blues. This camp set the tone for a New Deal for New South Wales players as far as State of Origin selection has been concerned.
One of the failures in the past has been the unwillingness by New South Wales selectors to give hugely gifted players (Jamie Soward is an example) their chance to play in the cauldron of State of Origin rugby league.
Another failure, especially over the past five years when the Blues were being defeated, was an inability to get a level of intensity in the play of the leading players compared with their Queensland opponents.
Look at how Billy Slater repeatedly out-played the stars designated to oppose him.
Stuart has countered this reality by inspiring his players to give their all, for the team and for themselves, to believe in themselves.
To my mind, really good selecting is at least 90 per cent of successful coaching. Stuart’s selecting, and it has been his responsibility, has been outstanding.
He hasn’t indulged in fantasy selecting. He has seen what he has and has selected the best players to play the type of rugby league that can defeat a brilliant but aging Maroons squad.
The big call in all of this was giving Jamie Soward his chance. It has been obvious for years that the Blues have lacked a kicker, at goal and for field position and bombs, like the Lockyer-Thurston combination.
Soward gives the Blues this kicking game, plus, as he showed towards the end of the second State of Origin match, a tricky running and off-load game near the opposition tryline.
Soward has been roundly criticised by most of the New South Wales rugby league media as a non-tackler and as a difficult person to chat to and get good colour information for articles. Tough.
The media in rugby league (and other sports codes) need to learn to generate their own insights and analyses rather than continually going to the players and coaches for crumbs.
The other critical selection has been that of Paul Gallen as captain. Confession time again. Gallen, along with Anthony Watmough, has been another of my pet dislikes as people on and off the field.
But again, just as he has reformed himself, Stuart seems to have reformed Gallen and Watmough. They still play hard. But the hardness is kept within the bounds of legitimacy, and on the field.
Finally comes Stuart’s insight into the Maroons, that they are a huge machine that has been unbeatable for years but which is beginning to show the signs of age. Instead of trying to run though this still powerful machine, Stuart has devised tactics to run around them.
This has worked (especially in the second State of Origin match) because of another Stuart master-stroke, playing the second-rower Gallen in the front row, and for 80 minutes.
What Gallen lacks in sheer bulk he more than compensates with with toughness, industry, doggedness, guts and a bit more pace and skill than his aggressive style of play suggests he has.
Stuart may have started the development of a new way of playing rugby league in the front lines with his promotion of Gallen.
One of the adages of sports is that ‘a good big man will always beat a good small man.’ But we now have to add the Stuart proviso to this: ‘unless the good small man is much more mobile and just as tough.’
Before the 2011 State of Origin series began, Mal Meninga and Queenslanders in general were rather disparaging about the Blues and about their supporters, arguing that they didn’t have the heart and stomach for Origin rugby league.
Stuart has changed all of that.
Let’s be frank, one of the finest sports sights of the season was to see the slumped and defeated Maroons players in their dressing room at the end of the second match.
Where was the puffed up self-belief and arrogance? There were signs in their slumped forms and glazed eyes of the terror that time (supported by great coaching and gutsy Blues players) had caught up with them.
The bluster and over-confidence was not going to work any more for them. They were now in territory that used to be inhabited by the Blues, a terrain where self-belief is transformed into a fear that the end is nigh.
Let the end of the Maroons dominance be tonight!