Five captains not better than one: Tigers fall for illusion of shared leadership model

The Wests Tigers have become the latest NRL team to abandon the traditional leadership model to appoint five co-captains for 2022.

Somehow for the first century that rugby league existed in Australia they managed to get by with just one captain leading each team.

How did all those teams not realise that you shouldn’t just have one skipper leading them onto the field – it’s such a massive burden that it needs to be shared by multiple players.

This is the kind of thinking you get when the snake oil merchants infiltrate sporting teams with their buzzwords and revolutionary systems which try to reinvent a wheel which needed no fixing.

The Tigers have announced James Tamou will no longer be captain after doing the role solo last season.

Well, they didn’t actually say he’d been given the punt. They announced the 2022 leadership group would consist of five players – Tamou, injured five-eighth Adam Doueihi, halfback Luke Brooks, new recruit Tyrone Peachey and winger Ken Maumalo.

This is what you do when there is no standout candidate.

It is not a new phenomenon in the NRL, there have been various forms of multiple captains models for the past 15 years since it became a novelty in the mid 2000s.

Tamou seemingly had the credentials at the Tigers – he was captain when Penrith went 18-1-1 to be runaway minor premiers in 2020 before being upset by Melbourne on grand final night.

He is easily their most experienced player and the 33-year-old prop is the only Wests Tiger who has played in the Origin and Test arenas apart from former Maroons forward Joe Ofahengaue, who has also represented Tonga.

Tamou is in the twilight of his career and off contract at season’s end, it is unlikely that the Tigers are going to offer the 286-game veteran another deal. 

Tigers coach Michael Maguire has to look to the future as he rebuilds this roster and it’s not necessarily a guarantee that Tamou will be a starting prop this season due to the rise of Stefano Utoikamanu and other younger middle forward options like Alex Twal, Ofahengaue and Thomas Mikaele.

Maguire only used Tamou for an average of 40 minutes last season. Only seven of the 31 players he used last year had fewer minutes per game.

The player who appears to be a natural leader who is entering the prime of his career is also sidelined as he tries to come back from a torn ACL.

Doueihi has been viewed as a future captain for the past couple of years at the Tigers but his injury means it will be at least 2023 before he takes the reins.

Brooks, Maumalo and Peachey are experienced players but have little captaincy experience and the halfback in particular has been criticised throughout his career for not being vocal enough as a playmaker.

Perhaps the added responsibility on Brooks’ shoulders this year will bring that out of him but these are the kinds of straws you clutch when there is not a clear choice.

Former English international James Graham copped some flak a few years ago when he compared the brutal nature of the team sport that is rugby league to being in the Army.

His words didn’t go down well with some people who thought he was being extreme but when you’re around an NRL team, you realise the regimented set-up is not far from a military barracks.

The NRL is a brutal competition, Graham argued, which attracts “a certain personality type” that can withstand the great physical demands and strict adherence to discipline on the training paddock and the playing field.

Does anyone honestly think an army platoon would have more than one leader – co-generals or a committee of leaders making decisions that needs a quorum?

When the going gets tough, NRL teams look to their leaders and the best ones have one person making the decisions that the rest of the players turn to for inspiration.

Not a rotating bunch of captains who are rostered on for various games. 

Rugby league coaches pray at the altar of consistency so it’s bizarre that many clubs are opting for a system where the ultimate responsibility for making important decisions and setting the benchmarks does not rest with one captain.

The Knights announced on Monday night before their trial against Canterbury that Kalyn Ponga would be their on-field captain this season while injured hooker Jayden Brailey, who is out for most of the year after tearing his Achilles in the pre-season, would perform the off-field captaincy duties.

Ponga is not a fan of the media, corporate and other off-field responsibilities so it’s not a bad move to appoint Brailey to look after that side of things.

Newcastle started last season by adopting the five-man model with Ponga and Brailey joined by Blake Green, Daniel Saifiti and Mitch Barnett. Not surprisingly, they have abandoned this idea.