How to win an NRL game

What’s the standard head count nowadays inside an NRL coaching staff? The last time I checked, it seemed there were more coaches than players.

There’s the assistant coach, halves coach, recruitment officer, strength and conditioner, physiotherapist, hypnotherapist, bus driver, nightclub minder, tattoo consultant, someone to hang up on Phil Rothfield’s phone calls and the bloke who picks what plays on the boom-box in the sheds, just to name a few.

It seems there’s not a possible life event in a league player’s existence that isn’t covered these days by someone passing themselves off as an important expert in Elastoplast or indispensable when it comes to getting a Gatorade mix spot-on.

Some punters call it overkill, yet those in the industry call it comprehensive.

Personally, I call it a sick joke on a club’s payroll and a great time to be in the tracksuit business.

This information-overload approach to regularly snaffling those two slippery competition points each week has become part of the professional landscape these days, but Saturday night proved there’s still an old move that trumps collective league smarts for guaranteeing a win.

It’s evil, strategic, scarce and viewed by those who wield the power to call upon it as a sleeved ace that should be held close to the chest like a Survivor immunity necklace.

And much like said television phenomenon, the move has the power to incite an instant cyclone of arse kissing and tears throughout various areas of your beloved organisation.

When called into action, the advantage is so unfair that it boosts your team into a temporary stratosphere of invincibility that only the combination of fixing the match and doping your whole front row could produce.

That’s right. The golden ticket to one sparkling 80-minute performance of which I speak is not outlaying 120k for Andrew Johns to spend half an hour with your halfback each week.

It’s your CEO’s decision to end the tenure of your head coach. Effective immediately.

If your team needs the instant hit of that soothing serum known as an immediate medicinal win, then it’s a cinch.

Simply bid arrivederci to Mr. Clipboard, wrap the farewell present with the ‘full support of the board’, clear your throat for the team song and watch your playing group care for at least one game once again.

This move from the playbook of abstract league theories has a snappy and instantaneous effect that involves the consequence of a footy-suit shafting the career aspirations of a person they told the world they unconditionally advocated. However, don’t be concerned; the feeling of guilt will be offset by the ecstasy of that single rousing win decorated with loveable underdog charm.

How else could Saturday night in the golden west be explained?

When the win-proof Parramatta Eels bucked a soggy form-line to roll a desperate premiership heavyweight in the Melbourne Storm, the uneducated looked straight for an objective reason.

Was it a tweaked second man play, encrypted defensive pattern or pre-match speech with the velocity of a hairdryer from a women’s prison?

No.

It was Steve Kearney’s decision to choose spending his future with daytime television over his players that took the three Dally M points on the night.

It’s the latest example in footy of ever-ailing subjects having a syringe of anti-crap plunged deep into their chest with the unfavourable lopsided count for a coach at a board meeting.

For everybody in the place besides the reject, it’s a TV dinner; a quick fix that guarantees instant satisfaction and only two minutes of frying something in a microwave.

So now the bar has been set, and therein lies the issue.

In rugby league’s modern day phase of paralysis by analysis, how does your team’s gaggle of paid analysts replicate that intangible pixie dust that buffets through a playing group when their leader is discarded?

Maybe we should just hire an extra strategist to work it out.