‘Consistency’ is a word often used throughout the rugby league season. In today’s salary cap-levelled, high injury-rated, rep season-affected game, it can often be what gets a team across the line heading towards the finals and the big dance in October.
What can often be of similar importance is the consistency of a team from season to season.
It is understated though, given how rare it is.
How often do we see a club have a stellar year and either come back to the pack or fall over completely the season after?
Conversely, how common is it for a poorly-performing club one year to rise to the top after an off-season of soul searching? It happens a lot, and has happened a great deal in recent seasons.
One big factor in a club’s year-to-year consistency is player retention – and not just that, but the retention of key players.
Funnily enough it is this time of the year (pre-season) which is one of the two times each year where we find ourselves talking mostly about the rugby league rather than who’s going where (the other time being finals time).
But a look at the player retention of certain clubs gives us some interesting results, which may be surprising to some but really do reflect the importance of player retention across the seasons.
It also reflects how much player movement has affected the NRL. No club has managed to retain more than 35 percent of their roster from season 2008 into 2013, and no club has more than nine players who are still there.
This probably represents a number of things: professionalism, the salary cap, a lack of concessions to clubs for long-serving players (until recently), shorter playing careers, the presence of England as an attractive alternative to an NRL gig, an increase in intra-code athletes, to name but a few.
I would say that going back even as little as a decade, player retention rates over a five-year period would have been much higher. I digress.
But back to the current crop. Despite bombing out of the finals in spectacular fashion last year, Manly are by far the best performers when it comes to player retention over the 2008-2013 period.
Nine of their players who tasted NRL action in 2008 are still on the club’s books, exactly one third (33.33%) of the 2008 playing list.
Out of these nine players, seven current or former internationals: Brett Stewart, Glenn Stewart, Jamie Lyon, Steve Matai, David Williams, Brent Kite and Anthony Watmough.
The other two, Jason King and Matt Ballin, are Origin representatives. Four have played rep football in the last 12 months.
Given this is the calibre of player Manly has managed to hold onto for five consecutive seasons, is it any surprise that they have been the most consistent team over those years?
Two premierships, one preliminary final, two top eight finishes don’t happen by chance when you’ve got this sort of quality turning out year after year, and it’s a fair bet the trend will continue in season 2013.
Any number of factors could combine to achieve this result of player turnover. Most of the players I’ve named were blooded into the NRL while at Manly and have become stars of the game there.
They may feel a sense of loyalty to the club. They may all be close mates. They may not want to leave a team that has won two premierships in four seasons. They might like the beach.
Whatever the reasons are, Manly demonstrates just how vital it is for clubs to put a high priority on the retention of their players.
Short-sightedness is often the reason for a club’s troubles as CEOs and coaches look for a quick fix rather than plan for the future, while a sown plan has reaped rich rewards for Manly over the past five years.
Melbourne have also done relatively well, managing to retain six of their 30-strong NRL roster from 2008.
As with the Sea Eagles, these players are key men: Slater, Smith, Cronk and Hoffman among them (although Hoffman did leave and return after a season abroad).
We’ll never know how well they would have performed if their 2008, 2009 and 2010 season results had been achieved legitimately.
But if they’d managed to keep these players and abided by the salary cap they might have ended the season near the top of the pile anyway. Unfortunately we can only speculate.
At the other end of the scale, Canterbury trail the rest by retaining only one player from their 2008 squad: Ben Barba.
The other 37 players from that year have moved on. Given the turmoil around the Bulldogs since 2008, is it any wonder that a) the players have moved so readily, and b) the club’s results have fluctuated wildly during that period?
Since 2008 they’ve finished last, second, thirteenth, ninth and second. A stable, core group of players might have prevented such severe fluctuation.
Although they deserve credit in that the one player they have kept from 2008 has become one of the genuine superstars of the game, and with the shrewd Des Hasler and Noel Cleal in charge of the roster, glory days a la Manly since 2008 might be just around the corner for the Dogs.
Brisbane’s figures show a change in the club’s culture over the past half decade.
Owing to their location and their late entry into the national competition, the Broncos were traditionally considered a ‘developing and retaining’ rather than ‘recruiting’ club.
In the 1990s for example, the club had Kerrod and Kevin Walters, Allan Langer, Gorden Tallis, Darren Lockyer, Andrew Gee, Michael Hancock and Wendell Sailor back up year after year, and it’s no surprise that they were the decade’s best-performing club.
However only seven of the club’s 2008 squad remain. During that period the team has had four top-eight finishes but has missed the finals once, and many tip the same to happen again this year.
A reversion to the 1990s ways, as much as it is possible in today’s game, might be the best way for the Broncos to return to the glory days of the past.
The increase in the salary cap might turn out to be a good thing for clubs’ player retention strategies; at least in the short term.
And this writer is loathe to suggest that an injection of fresh blood into an NRL squad each year is a bad thing for the team or the game.
But as much as we love talking about the ins and outs, the comings and goings and the mid-season switches, there is something special about seeing a group of players so tightly identified with one club run out in the same colours in round one season after season.
Whether keeping a group like this at a club over time breeds culture, familiarity or loyalty which in turn breeds success will always be open for debate.
But the way Manly has gone about things in building a team and holding on to it, as well as their results over the past five years, might just speak for itself.
(The numbers for all clubs are here: Manly (9/27 players from 2008 remain, a percentage of 33.33 percent); Sydney (7.26, 26.92 percent), Wests (8/30, 26.67 percent), Newcastle (7/27, 25.92 percent), St George Illawarra (7/27, 25.92 percent) Brisbane (7/28, 25 percent), New Zealand (6/26 23.07 percent), Melbourne (6/30, 20 percent), Canberra 6/31, 19.35 percent), Parramatta (5/26, 19.23 percent), Penrith (6/34, 17.64 percent), Cronulla (5/31, 16.12 percent), Souths (5/32, 15.62 percent), North Queensland (5/36, 13.88 percent), Gold Coast (5/36, 13.88 percent), Canterbury (1/38, 2.63 percent).
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