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With the salary cap the way it is these days, the window for most teams to win a premiership is limited.
Generally, you have three to four years.
Yet a few clubs like Melbourne and Sydney have bucked this trend and have been able to compete for premierships most years. Now many will say the Roosters simply get out the cheque book and try their best to buy their way to a grand final win.
That’s certainly true, but it also overlooks another important factor. The Roosters have adopted the NFL method of having specialist coaches across the board. In NFL pretty much every team has a head coach, offensive and defensive coordinator, a special teams coach, offensive and defensive line coaches, linebacker, running back and quarterbacks coach, plus a few others.
Now if you take a team like the Roosters they are following down that same path. They had Anthony Minichiello coaching James Tedesco, Andrew Johns working with the halves (although why you need Joey when you have Cooper Cronk, I’m not sure), a speed coach as well as a mindset coach amongst the standard strength and rehab guys that most clubs have on the payroll.
Brisbane has used the assistant coach method for years with great success. You hear far fewer players saying Wayne Bennett is a tactical genius than you do saying he is a great man manager. A big part of this apart from great talent is that he trusts his assistants, delegates them the roles he’s not great in and focuses on the players, what’s going on with them outside of footy and what type of headspace they are in and the results speak for themselves.
The days of clubs have a head coach, a trainer, physio/strapper and maybe an assistant coach are gone and more and more clubs and coaches are putting greater value and emphasis on support staff. It’s a big reason why Michael McGuire knocked back a gig with Manly.
He wanted to big a crew of support staff with him and when the club said no, he passed up the offer.
To give you an example of the how many support staff some clubs have, use the Rooters as an example. They have a head coach, at least two assistant coaches, a fullbacks coach, a recruitment officer, a psychologist, a mindset coach, a wrestling coach, four physios, a skills coach for wingers, a strength and power coach, a speed and agility coach, a sprinting coach, a head performance person and someone who specialises in GPS.
Compare them to some clubs who enter seasons with a CEO or recruitment officer and it’s not hard to see why some clubs are miles ahead of other. In the coming years, I predict that what will separate the best teams in the NRL isn’t just the salary cap but the quality of the specialist coaches they hire.
Take Melbourne, for example. Plenty of fans are keen to bemoan their so-called grubby wrestling tactics but like it or not they work and have done so for years.
(Photo by Michael Dodge/Getty Images)
Non-Storm fans like to say that while their club/players do wrestle they don’t do so nearly as much or as bad as Melbourne do. This is naive thinking. There are very few clubs and coaches who wouldn’t hire the Storm’s wrestling coach if they could.
Not because they like to play that brand of football but because it works and like it or not, clubs will exploit every loophole and push the rules to the limit in order to get an advantage over other clubs if they think it will help them win.
Now hopefully we don’t end up with a game that is as so scripted and rehearsed that we lose sight of the importance of the need for flair, individual brilliance and off the cuff play, but if playing the percentages wins games, that means more sponsorship and revenue for clubs, and then that’s what will ultimately drive the style of football teams play.
Fans would rather win ugly than lose pretty.
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