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Opinion
Paul McGregor was a very good player, a lovely guy by all reports, but a very ordinary rugby league coach, and how he got control of the Dragons first-grade team for seven long seasons is one of life’s mysteries.
For most of McGregor’s tenure Saints played what I’ve like to call ‘Maryball’. Essentially it’s a style of football that left everything to the imagination and was predictable to a fault.
Now, predictable and unimaginative football can be successful in the right hands, as evidenced by the success of Warren Ryan’s ‘Wazzaball’ back in the 1980s, but not so with Mary, as his one-out-hit-up tactics saw the Dragons finish in an average of tenth place over his time at the helm and play just three finals matches in seven years. Player skills actually regressed under McGregor.
Fast-forward to 2021 and McGregor’s gone, Anthony Griffin is in the coach’s chair and things are starting off reasonably well with the team playing some enterprising football for a change. Then it all came unstuck after Round 17 when Paul Vaughan convened a meeting of Dragons dimwits around his Weber.
Saints immediately fell in a heap and reverted once again to the familiar Maryball style of play, with Corey Norman seemingly its greatest exponent, and went on to finish the year in 12th place. Dragon’s fans were over it.
The Saints faithful were then treated to Hook’s own version of moneyball in the 2021 off-season, when virtually any NRL player on JobKeeper was taken in at Kogarah with the promise of a full-time salary.
At the same time, another very strange thing happened, as St George Illawarra somehow retained most of their crop of emerging talented youngsters for a change. These emerging players – Jayden Sullivan, Talatau Amone, Tyrell Sloan, Cody Ramsey, Shalom O’Ofou and the Feagai twins Matt and Max – have already demonstrated in their limited first-grade appearances that they are footballers who like to play what’s in front of them, let the ball do the talking and take the opposition on. They all look like naturals to me.
(Photo by Matt King/Getty Images)
So what I’m hoping for from Anthony Griffin this year is that he abandons the conservative style of football of the past, lets these young guys loose on the opposition and gives the team his blessing to play attractive attacking football.
They’ve certainly got the talent to do it, and even if it doesn’t come off all the time or against all of the teams, it will give them a good basis for the years to come. Predictable football is easy to defend; it’s the unpredictable that will worry the opposition.
So here’s the team I think Griffin should trot out in Round 1. It’s a team capable of playing attacking football and causing the opposition some real headaches.
Hook, we want to see a team playing enterprising football this year. The days of Maryball are over!
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