Sticky fingers: The Ricky Stuart Project

Schadenfreude – that thing you do discreetly when somebody else’s kid drops the ice-cream. When the serial gramophone-piped pest at your local betting hall gets done by a nose. When your starch-collared punishment of a boss demeans himself at the corporate golf day; space-age Pings to boot.

It’s the unthumbed nose and the raspberry left unblown; the little smirk squirming through the corner of your upturned mouth. It’s that childhood instruction barely retained: sternly spoken, duly observed. When you can’t think of anything nice to say about someone and you don’t say anything at all.

But mine is a burgeoned ordeal. I can’t refrain any longer; I’m sniggering aloud. I’ve an obligation to confess.

I enjoy watching Ricky Stuart-coached rugby league teams lose; and inordinately so. The wider the margin; the more lascivious the fun. I count the snarled obscenities begat by every butchered try, every missed tackle and every dubious penalty conceded. I fantasise about the sprays to which I can’t be privy; the ear-shredding, neck-popping invective dispensed loss after feckless loss.

How indulgent could a fortnight be? Stuart’s Canberra Raiders have lost their last two NRL matches by an averaged 40 points; conceding 54 points and nine tries (for symmetry’s sake) on each excursion. Consider the fare; surly media conferences and diatribes aplenty, referee and administrator foibles brought to bear, player inadequacy writ large, and resolute apologies for club supporters mouthed every other week.

The Ricky Stuart Project invokes the lot, and I enjoy each episode accordingly. Fun for impartial league fans everywhere.

This is complex psychological terrain. I’ve no stringent distaste for the man, but I revel in his trials. I pick at the holes but regard him the smartest, most consummate coach in the NRL, and I’ll try explaining why.

Even the misanthropes ought concede the merit in Sticky’s 2002 premiership tilt as an inaugural coach; the Eastern Suburbs/Sydney Roosters’ first in 27 years. Then there were the consecutive grand final losses of 2003 and 2004, seminal enough to excite notions of a Bondi Junction dynasty and Stuart’s transition from decorated halfback to the code’s preeminent young coach.

His brand of rugby league was as battles waged cerebrally and physically in relatable portions – aggression as device rather than homage to convention. A Ricky Stuart-coached team was dispatched as testimony unto his rationale as a player; tough enough to demonstrate that he was smart enough to beat you. Try winning modern footy games by any other means.

Sticky’s Rooster salad days installed two immutable tenets into his fledgling clipboard career. There was the gravitas Sydney-centric rugby league media seem determined to observe, and there was Stuart’s self-designated role as the corrective hand applicable to any player of any standing.

His was the hubris of the architect converting flawless design into irreproachable form; the prodigious potter at the wheel. Lend him an assortment of players and he would mould you that dominant outfit. He had plenty to talk about, and there were plenty to listen.

League fans will recall the futile 2005 and disastrous 2006 Sydney Roosters campaigns, culminating as the latter did with his retrenchment. The dogmatism that had forged his brand premium became so odious as to beggar the unsheathed blades, and he’d fashioned to jump before a board-sponsored push had him bounced at season’s end.

Sticky deemed it “one of the saddest days in my football career” but left with his “head held high” having “achieved a high degree of success in the past five years”; possessed as he was by unmitigated pride and belief in his method.

The adaptability and tact styled by (durable NRL coaches) Wayne Bennett and Tim Sheens seemed unavailable to Stuart as if by incapacity, and that Roosters stint remains his longest tenure; augmented by those three successful seasons.

To contemplate the remainder – 2005 NSW State of Origin series victory aside – is to disseminate his pattern: commitment, projection, disappointment and deflection. My pastime is in consigning every pre-season decree and post-game rant to category.

But I’m no psychoanalyst; just a humble rugby league fan. And how keen we were to appraise Sticky at Cronulla-Sutherland in 2007, juggling club rigours with his Australian Test team commission.

The Sharks had appealed due to “the club’s massive potential to be a major force in the NRL” to which he made resolve to “bring a level of expertise and enthusiasm” sufficient to absorb the Shire’s joyless denizens. He composed a solitary Sharks finals foray in 2008; only to abscond an extended contract midway through 2010 so as to “go out and look at some new challenges”, despite fostering “a really close bond [with] a great group of players”.

A parlous dressing-room became so unfeasibly toxic that Sticky unstuck himself seven rounds early, an outcome implied as “also right for the club” as he stuffed Cronulla cash into his boardshorts and sprung.

Then there was a second term coaching the NSW Blues, acquitted by the method and rhetoric that had spoiled his club postings so rapidly. Dissertations about life, success, and effective rugby league – columns bulged with decent copy – so cruelly punctuated by bad refereeing and those ‘critical’ player mistakes. The ones proficient coaches seem to overcome when it matters.

Two series contested, two vexatious losses; then another ‘new challenge’ as an exigency. By now, ‘new challenge’ meant unstained canvas to anyone but his pocketful of acolytes doing service in the media.

Stuart’s 2013 Parramatta Eels are recent rugby league folklore. Being “really excited about a huge challenge ahead of me” became an “extremely challenging” former job via 6 (in-season) months, 24 matches, 19 losses, 12 cancelled players, innumerable expletives and a sturdily-built wooden spoon. The same implement that had hovered nefariously over Ricky’s ruddy backside before his Shark Park departure in July 2010.

Notwithstanding the administrative intrigue and mooted personal issues that informed his time in Parramatta, this was a walloping most probably deferred and so thoroughly deserved.

Sticky was off to Canberra, and the Raiders anticipated their expensive turn.

I’d best reiterate my point. Nobody needs another statistical excoriation of Ricky Stuart’s coaching career. Anyone can reprise an NRL ladder lodging Canberra on its fourteenth and third-lowest rung, matched with its worst defensive record and poorest point differential. And let the churlish and ungenerous of heart forecast his unseemly Raiders rejection.

I’m just here for the ride: the loquacity in victory and incredulity in defeat, the naughty words hurled at coaching box windows and the fine-friendly bombast spat down microphones.

He’s the smartest one around because he’s still being remunerated to do it. Work that out. You limp through NRL Supercoach seasons for nothing.

It’s all about the vision, the pathway, and the blueprint. It’s the Ricky Stuart Project; coming soon to a rugby league club near you.