Coaching in any sport goes through cycles. Everyone is fighting the last war, until someone else finds a new weapon, and then we all adapt again.
But what happens when the war fundamentally changes? What if you thought this was a boxing match, but the other guy suddenly knows what punches you’re going to throw?
That’s what we’ve seen in the last half-decade or so across the world of sports. Not just rugby league: all sports, everywhere.
There was a time, a simpler time for sure, when all you had to do was set yourselves up, maybe send someone to watch your opponents once, then give the boys a gee-up in the sheds and send them out onto the park.
That doesn’t exist anymore, in rugby league or anywhere else. Analytics has killed it. Young people have killed it.
Why would you send your team out to face an opponent you could have looked up, but chose not to? All the data on every team you’ll ever face is right there, at your fingertips, with curated video clips and detailed background information. You’d be crazy not to use it, right? Right?
What if shouting at people no longer made you look passionate, but out of control? Like you weren’t fired up, but not thinking straight? Would anyone take you seriously anymore?
What is a Proper Rugby League Man?
Rugby league has undergone two very, very significant shifts in a very, very short amount of time.
When Aiden Tolman, who has made the most appearances of any current NRL player, made his debut in 2008, he entered a league that barely knew social media, where few, if any clubs had data analysts, and where most of the playing group was, demographically speaking, much the same as it had been for the previous 100 years of rugby league in Australia.
In the 15 years between full-time professionalism and Tolman’s debut, not much had changed in the day to day operate of rugby league clubs. In the 15 years since, the game is near unrecognisable.
The coaching cohort from 2008 presents a good starting point to this discussion of what the trade is in 2022.
Of the current 16 NRL head coaches, four were in the league in that year: Ivan Cleary was at the Warriors, Ricky Stuart was at the Sharks and Des Hasler and Craig Bellamy were at the clubs they are at now (though Hasler left and came back).
Nathan Brown, recently departed from the Warriors, was then at the Dragons and Michael Maguire, spectacularly punted from the Tigers last week, was an assistant to Bellamy, a sort of first grade coach as he deputised when the Storm coach was wearing his NSW Blues hat.
(Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)
In the interests of being a completist: Mick Potter, now at the Bulldogs, was a head coach in Super League with Catalans Dragons, while Brad Fittler, still in an elite coaching job with NSW, was at the Roosters.
It’s Brown and Maguire who are the key subjects of this article. They are, perhaps, among the last of the proper rugby league men. Anthony Griffin, still at the Dragons, might be the final one standing.
The ‘proper rugby league men’ refers to a phrase coined by soccer writers Alan Tyers and John Nicholson to describe the omnipresent pundits who talked about the game, but whose only qualification to talk about it was they had been good at playing it.
Dutifully, their opinions on the game, and particularly, who was good at coaching it, weren’t really based on anything other than who they were mates with rather than much a qualitative analysis of their skills.
The proper football man wasn’t interested in tactics, they liked someone who ‘knew the league’, ‘understood the game’ and ‘had an eye for a player’. Nothing you could judge them against, because analysis was something nerds did. All of this will seem familiar to anyone who has seen NRL 360.
In this sense, proper rugby league men is about ideas out of time, formed in a game that doesn’t exist anymore and which fades into the rear view mirror with every player who retires.
Ours is perhaps the last sport that holds onto them, because the way we talk about the sport has also largely not changed from 2008, or 1998, or 1988 for that matter. The mediums have changed, but the message has not.
To discuss why Brown and Maguire were so out of time, you have to think about the two central facets of being a coach – tactics and man management – and how those things have so drastically changed in the last 5-10 years.
Let’s take tactics first. This part refers back to the computers, because where once, you flew blind, now, you’ve have as detailed a map as you could wish for.
Your ability to coach is heavily informed by those around you, who you surround yourself with and the expertise that you choose to tap.
The impact of analytics into planning, reacting and dissecting events, across every level, is incalculable, and it simply wasn’t a thing until really very recently in the history of sport.
Simply having an analyst, or any assistant, but particularly one who trades in non-traditional methods is not enough. You have to listen to them. Be shaped by them. Fundamentally, you have to believe they can tell you something you don’t already know, and then be prepared to act on what they tell you.
Every club has analysts, but speaking kindly, not every coach knows how to use them. This was a central tenet of the ‘proper rugby league man’: a deep-seated belief that their methods had worked in the past and would work in the now. It wasn’t what you knew, but who you knew.
This rippled first through baseball, with the widely-heard of but frequently misread Moneyball, it then made it into more quantifiable sports like cricket, and then into less readily countable things like soccer and rugby league.
It’s probably at this point that I would mention if you don’t know anything about soccer, or don’t care about it, or don’t like it, then I apologise, because I will refer to it as a compare and contrast from now on. It’s hard not to.
Soccer is typically several years ahead of rugby league in this regard, because it is (if you’ll excuse the businessspeak) a more mature market.
More people play it, therefore there is more diversity of opinion, more comparables. Scottish football looks different to Dutch, to Spanish, to Argentinian, to Senegalese and so on.
Soccer in 2022 is predicated on the idea that, for want of a better phrase, the coach has an idea. Ralf Rangnick, one of the most progressive managers in the sport, described the role of a coach in sending the team out.
“They have in their brains the video of the perfect game,” he said. “The job of a manager is to transform this idea into the heads, hearts, brains and veins of your players. This is what I call motivation.
“Having a great speech before the game with the players has, in my opinion, nothing to do with motivation. That’s inspiration. Motivation is a transformation of my idea, but to do that, you have to be aware of the type of football that you want to play.”
Other sports have this too – notably basketball and ice hockey – but I don’t know enough about them to use as a reference point. If you do, I’m sure a lot of these points will seem highly transferable.
(Photo by Alex Grimm/Bongarts/Getty Images)
Is there such a thing as philosophy in rugby league?
The importance of this in evaluating coaches tactically comes down to their philosophy. Imagine a world where, in his first press conference as the new five-year-contracted coach of the Wests Tigers, a journalist asked Cameron Ciraldo what his philosophy was.
In fact, you probably don’t need to imagine it, because you know who Brian Smith is, and probably remember him as someone who never won anything.
But it’s impossible to imagine Erik ten Hag sitting down in his first Manchester United presser without someone asking that question. In fact, it’s hard to imagine an A-League coach not being asked.
I don’t know anything about basketball, but if you put ‘Steve Kerr coaching’ into Google, two of the top five suggestions are ‘philosophy’ and ‘style’, so I’m guessing it’s a thing there too. (Incidentally, “record” is number one, because some things never change.)
But we don’t talk about tactical philosophy in rugby league. Perhaps it’s our belief in the blood and guts nature of the sport, or simply because we think the question would be laughed at.
(Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
If and when a new Tigers coach is named, I probably won’t ask the question because I’ll feel faintly ridiculous.
It’s certainly not because rugby league coaches don’t have philosophies: from Warren Ryan to Tim Sheens to Brian Smith to Shaun Wane, there’s plenty of guys who have had very specific ideas of how best to win a rugby league game and stuck to it across different jobs and different rosters.
A Brad Arthur team, for example, is based on the centrality of a big pack with second-phase play, with the salary cap focused on several players who can generate metres and offloads. That’s how he wants to play and developed a roster to fit it.
Even Trent Barrett, with his obsession with a ball-playing lock and playing through wingers in tackles one and two, had a philosophy, and you could even make the argument that he was too much of an ideologue in that he refused to change his philosophy to suit inferior players when he went from the Panthers system to the Bulldogs.
Maguire did have this, sort of, but his peaked in 2014 and never evolved. This is a key tenet of proper football manism: failure to adapt despite overwhelming evidence, especially if you achieved in the past. Don’t back down, double down.
It’s worth using a thought experiment to explain this. Once upon a time, I was a Cultural Studies student, and there was a little game you could play to judge whether a film had succeeded in creating a mood, or if a characterisation had been successful.
Describe the character without mentioning anything about what they look like. Who is Darth Vader? Who is Obi Wan Kenobi?
You can do this to sports: how does a Jurgen Klopp team play? What about Pep Guardiola? Who were the 2005 Wests Tigers, the 1985 Bulldogs, the late-2000s Melbourne Storm?
Now consider Nathan Brown. I’ve watched Brown since his days in Huddersfield and I could not begin to tell you how he thinks rugby league matches are won. There’s no such thing as Brownball.
It’s strange, really, because Brown was a Smith protege, but seems to have departed from the core tenets of Smithism by having no discernible mark on his teams.
Nathan Brown (Tony Feder/Getty Images)
Trent Robinson, another in the Smith coaching tree, has much more of the ‘promote the football’ ethos, as evidenced by winning two premierships while making the most errors. Tony Smith, the most obvious cognate, has perhaps the most identifiable style of any current coach anywhere in the world.
On the other side of the philosophical spectrum, there’s the arch-pragmatists, those who are consistent in culture and expectations off the field even when on it, they change regularly.
I think of this as a contrast between a signature style and a signature method. Shane Flanagan’s Cronulla had a style, Craig Bellamy has a method.
Bellamy’s core methodology has survived even when his playing style has gone from Wrestlemania to razzle dazzle.
That encapsulates the culture – sending new players to work on building sites when they join the Storm – to the instructions, such as giving very specific tasks and roles to most players, but extreme freedom to a select few others. It’s how he turns jobbers into superstars, a process some see as ‘next man up’ but is actually a triumph of pure coaching and strategy.
Wayne Bennett, too, is a master of this. Everyone knew what they had to do and when: especially in his later years, when Jason Demetriou wrote the music, but Bennett remained the conductor and got the musicians to perform.
There’s a reason why certain coaching trees – those who played under great coaches and then themselves became coaches – are so big.
The legacy of Tim Sheens and Brian Smith, two of the great ideologues of the past, and latterly Bellamy and Robinson, spread and spread.
(Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)
There’s another aspect to this. Soccer coaches are now not coaches, they are managers, and not just in the nomenclature.
They don’t coach at all that much anymore: they manage a team of people that coach, but also oversee data teams that provide insights, consult on recruitment that is largely handled by someone else and, of course, deal with individuals in the team.
You can see this in the best NRL coaches. Robinson might have been a really good coach when he was younger in France, but now, he’s an overseer of Jason Ryles and Matt King, who sit above a coterie of other specialists.
If you don’t believe me, watch the Roosters warm up: there’ll be two blokes in shirt and slacks on the park, putting the players through their paces, but no Robbo.
Ivan Cleary is much the same. Again, if you don’t believe me, go listen to the pressers from when he missed matches due to his knee surgery.
Andrew Webster, who replaced him for one game, and Cameron Ciraldo, who stood in on another occasion, repeatedly said that they didn’t really change anything because all the work was already done.
Delegation, and being able to delegate confidently, is now among the most important skills. Smith foresaw this. He wrote a piece for this very site in 2015 that explained in depth the influence that analysts would have in the near future, and how good coaches would need to integrate them into their work.
Whatever you think of Maguire or Brown, it is hard to cast them as great delegators. I can’t imagine a world where someone with a laptop who never played a game of first grade changes Brown’s mind about anything.
The philosophy and the delegation go hand in hand: you have an overarching idea, recruit to it (both in players and staff), then trust your underlings to bring it to life.
When you look at this with Wests Tigers, it’s hard to see how they were set up to play. Jackson Hastings has 90 touches a game, but he’s only been there six months. What about last year or the year before? What’s the philosophy?
The medium and the message
The final aspect of the proper rugby league man comes down to the people you coach. As mentioned above, there are two facets to being a good coach: tactics and man management.
If you remember the Rangnick quote, he spoke about the difference between motivation and inspiration. Your plan, delivered over days, weeks, months and years on the training ground, and then what you say in the sheds to fire them up.
There was a time when information was limited and you trained twice a week that inspiration was the key element, because that’s where you could add value to the group. Now, it’s almost completely shifted.
The central aspect, however, is not the method but the delivery. Maguire is a noted disciplinarian, a giver of sprays. I can talk about how he goes about it because I know, because they stuck it on the telly last year, and because you can overhear sometimes before pressers. He gets stuck into his players.
(Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)
We saw Madge’s passion in the show, and he seemed to be commended for it, but to me, it struck me as dreadfully dated. It looked like methods that might have worked in 1992, 2002 or maybe 2012, but not in 2022.
The playing group has fundamentally changed. For one, the demographics are notably different and that has a huge effect.
There’s a theme in Patrick Skene’s outstanding book The Big O on the life and times of Olsen Filipaina, about ‘cultural competence’.
It was discussed when describing the differing methods of Frank Stanton, Balmain Tigers’ disciplinarian coach in the mid-80s, and Graham Lowe, Kiwis coach at the same time, in dealing with Olsen, the first Pasifika superstar in Australian rugby league.
It went something like this: when Stanton was unhappy, he would bollock Filipaina, who would stare at the ground, because it was in-built in him culturally to do so. Stanton would then bollock him again for not looking him in the eye.
Being shouted at certainly didn’t make him play any better. It didn’t fire him up like it might an Anglo-Celtic Australian. Coaches often appear like father-figures to their players, and in Polynesian culture, you never speak back to your father.
Maguire’s last Wests Tigers team featured ten Polynesian players – compare to his Souths 2014 Premiers, which had just four – but the communication appeared never to have changed. His stint with the Kiwis will be very interesting when it resumes for the World Cup.
In an era where the playing group is culturally used to something very different to what used to be the norm, cultural competence is a non-negotiable skill. Some invest heavily in it, and you’ll get no points for guessing who.
A few weeks ago, I attended a management conference on delivering the best outcomes when working with Pacific and Maori athletes. The Roosters sent three people, Parramatta sent two. Penrith sent people from the highest echelons of their coaching staff and from their junior pathways.
It isn’t just Polynesian players, though. Every generation thinks young people have gone soft, but with this generation, where mental health and workplace conduct are genuine hot button issues, the way that you conduct yourself in leadership positions has never been more relevant.
They also talk more than ever: every player knows every other player on social media, they share ideas in a private forum that the coach doesn’t get to see. It’s far more widespread than two blokes meeting in the back of a pub for a gossip. If you have a group of your players who think you’re a dick, every other team in the league will know about it.
It was put to me recently by a friend that, back in the 1980s and 1990s, players from opposing teams often hated each other, real Silvertails v Fibros stuff. Now, they form prayer circles after full time. They comment on each other’s posts on Instagram. They know it’s just a game.
(Photo by Matt King/Getty Images)
“As time goes on, generations change, their minds and mentality couldn’t handle me,” said Ricky Stuart, one of the 2008 club who remains in the game, to Andrew Webster of the Sydney Morning Herald in 2020.
“Now, I’m a relationship coach. I don’t mind if the player doesn’t like me, as long as he trusts me — that I care about him and do everything we can to win.”
“Wok (Warren Ryan) would last one review of a game with these blokes today. It’s not what you say to the player but how.”
Evolving the delivery method to suit your audience is something that Maguire seems never to have done. This, too, is a proper rugby league man trait.
The man management and the tactics now meet. Rugby league has, historically, been the most collectivist of sports: even now, the language of ‘full credit to the boys’ pervades.
But tactically, it is now possible to break apart collective strategies to individual instructions, because you can create an analytical plan, with videos and personalised messaging, for everyone.
In a salary-capped sport where your job is both to win collectively and to raise the individual values of the players for future trading, both of these angles need to be covered.
If your winger has a problem with defensive reads, you can give them five clips to suggest where they might do it better. When players reach first grade, they rarely need much skills coaching, because they’re already elite footy players. What they need is tailored instructions and detailed feedback.
Brown’s problem appeared to be delivering messages. I don’t know how he spoke to his players, but based on my experiences talking to him in the media, he was a remarkably unconcise speaker: you’d transcribe him and realise he’d said the same thing three ways.
Perhaps this was an affectation designed to waste the media’s time – if I knew I had to face the hacks for 10 minutes after a defeat, I’d go round the houses too – but if it was how he spoke all the time, it must have been difficult for the players to know what it was that they were actually meant to be doing.
In accepting the way that the game is in 2022, the way that all successful sports teams are now, is about using the available resources correctly, optimising your information and then being able to transmit that information in both a manner that your players can understand and in a way that makes them want to enact it.
In rugby league, we can read that as learning how to delegate and trust your backroom staff, to take on what they tell you and then make decisions based on it, and to then deliver those decisions succinctly to the playing group.
Maguire and Brown seemed incapable of this. They were men out of time. They were proper rugby league men.
The Barry
Roar Guru
You’ve just said recruitment and retention plays a huge part in a team’s success, that a coach has a huge role in recruitment and retention, but a coach has limited input into a team’s success I’m not suggesting a great coach can win a comp with a rubbish team, but likewise a great halfback can’t win a comp with a rubbish team. And there have been ordinary halfbacks who’ve won premierships in good teams. Same as coaches, but you wouldn’t say a halfback isn’t important to a teams premiership chances If the Storm had appointed say Paul Langmack as coach in 2002 as Craig Bellamy would they have had the same sustained success? Maybe you’ll say “we’ll never know” bit I think we can have a fair guess Likewise, Bozo was a great coach with great teams. If Manly and Australia had given the job to David Hoskins, would he have had the same success…? It’s crazy to suggest he would
jimmmy
Roar Rookie
I didn't read your reply the other day but it's spot on. Bellemey is like a good heads up halfback. He plays what he sees. Paul Green was a ' systems man' . Make the team fit his system. If the players are not right for your system , you are dead meat. I heard an interview Bellemey in 2020 after the Covid break and after the rules had changed and the Storm had lost a couple. He said ( to paraphrase) . ' the game has changed. We need to change the way we play. We need to be less structured and play more off the cuff. I went and backed the Storm to win the comp. Bellemeys system is that he stays flexible and changes with the game.
Dumbo
Roar Rookie
“Analytics is a zero sum game”. Jiimmmy, I know what you mean, but I’m not convinced. If every team runs the same analysis and reaches the same conclusions then yes. If some teams do it better than others (and some just go through the motions), then no. The author of the piece reckons that skill development is hardly essential because the players are skilled by the time they get to First Grade. I have to disagree. Lachlan Ilias (for example) is learning on the job, and he is not the only one. I’d suggest that analytics can be used to help in skill development “look at these stats for DCE, and see how he…” So I think analytics have a place, as well as skill development, having the right cattle, and the coach instilling the RIGHT ATTITUDE. Effort plays, never giving up when 18 points down, trying to play smarter not just harder etc. As an aside, the one thing I disagree with in the article is the statement “In a salary-capped sport where your job is both to win collectively and to raise the individual values of the players for future trading….” Rugby League does not fit that mould. We have a salary capped sport, but do NOT have any transfer system which allows trading of players and recouping of investment. Maybe the author had a brain fade over that, but I think it does not invalidate his views on the benefits of using analytics.
Pomoz
Roar Rookie
Great article Mike. Well written and thought provoking. If you spend time working in Asia you realise how cultural understanding is key to getting the best out of your staff and yourself. Bennett seems to coach by understanding the players and what makes them tick. This instinctively means he tries to understand the cultural differences too. That skill is both timeless and priceless in coaching and in general leadership. As for ranting, the great Alex Ferguson responded to comments about his famous "hairdryer" rants (gets close to a players face and shouts at them) with a statement that "it only works with some players. There are those who need the boot up the backside and those who need a cuddle and to be told they are brilliant". Humans eh? Tricky things to deal with and manage. Maguires ranting reminds me of the Sergeant Majors in the army who would scream at you so close, their spittle would drip of your face. They usually coupled their rant with a threat to end your life and beat you to a pulp. Once you got over the shock of it the first few times, I found it made me want to laugh. I had to really focus to stop myself laughing and thereby getting myself into serious trouble. I suspect the Tigers players are the same. I wouldn't be surprised to find a few players do impressions of him and mimic his rants (when he's not around of course). As for delegation (an issue for Hook when he was at the Panthers), without it you are limited to what you can do in the 24 hours in a day. You are limited to what your own skill set is. You also limit the ability of those in your team to learn and grow. It is based on the "hero" model of leadership e.g. The leader must make all the decisions, the leader must be in control. That model is so dated and deeply flawed, but everybody likes the idea of a single person riding into town and taking care of business. Half of Hollywood's movies are built around the idea of the hero leader so it is little wonder so many people think that's how a leader should be. But how can somebody like Cleary or Bellamy, be a statistics expert, a physio expert, fitness expert, a nutrition expert? Oh and drive the team bus (Gus did that in the 80's). The last issue you talked about was clarity of speech. You had doubt about Brown's ability to sum up an issue in a concise manner and I have equal doubts over Barretts ability to do the same. I watched his YouTube video about defence and I really struggled to stay awake. It was wordy and to me at least, a bit confusing. Alas, not everybody has the gift of eloquence that somebody like Gus posessess. He may talk bollocks at times, but it's always done so with clarity and elegance.
matth
Roar Guru
It’s the argument that always used to annoy me about Bennett at Brisbane. He inherited an aging set of QLD stars who hadn’t played in Sydney. Langer was playing for Ipswich and had only just debuted in Origin. He identified and brought on so many players. Kerrod Walters, Hancock, Carne, Renouf, Sailor, Tuqiri, Thorn, Webcke, Petero, Berrigan, Lockyer, and the list goes on and on. None of those players were bought from elsewhere. But yeah, cattle
Forty Twenty
Roar Rookie
As the late Bozo Fulton used to say ''It's all about the cattle''. Bozo ended up with a high winning percentage because he coached at two clubs with the best , second or third best cattle in the comp. He also coached the Australian team which always had the best cattle. I agree with Bozo. It's not a controversial view and the history of the game backs up the idea strongly. I'd argue strongly that recruitment and retention is much more crucial than the coach. Plenty of teams have looked unreal when they have a stellar roster and the coach gets much of the credit. The same coaches goes to a weaker club and all of a sudden it looks like they are poor coaches. I can give plenty of examples but I remember watching the Chooks at Brookie up against Manly just after the Northern Beagles and they were like clockwork with Fittler running the show and Ricky Stuart the coach. Stuart has never had such a strong roster since and many of his teams have looked like they're poorly coached. It's an illusion. Swap Fittler and another 5 great players to Manly and give Stuart 5 of our worst and all of a sudden it looks like he can't coach. Maybe the Broncos are heading back towards the top because they are hanging on to the best ones finally. Time will tell. If their best are now in the lower grades at the Storm then history could well repeat. A coach like Bennett who is great at attracting players is much more valuable than Madge but give Madge the best cattle and a great run with injuries and it's him holding up the trophy.
The Barry
Roar Guru
Yep. That’s what the “it’s all about the cattle” argument misses…that the coach is often (should be) responsible for creating the systems that identify and develop the players and comes up with strategies to allow those players to combine effectively and show their best It’s a bit silly for someone to even hint that you could have stuck anyone into the Melbourne head coach role in 2003 and he would have had the same success as Bellamy… because cattle
Megeng
Roar Rookie
Started off not liking this. But by the end you had me nodding. Worth the read! Odd that the spoken culture hasn’t caught up with the changes in reality, as it has in other sports
Nathan Absalom
Roar Guru
Well worth the read, very thought provoking. Thinking about Madge, his philosophy was pretty clear at Souths. Heavy reliance on a strong kick-chase game, often having the dummy half run on the 4th to set for the kick chase and pinning down in their own 22. Plenty of repeat sets, make the other team work hard and run over them late. Trouble is, he was so dependent on Reynolds without him he had a points differential of -2000-odd or so, and couldn't really replicate it elsewhere. His time with the refs was interesting, invoking a crackdown that basically conceded that coaches see the rules as optional extras. I think he's a coach that can take you from top 8 to contenders, but you're totally right in that he has a shelf life, isn't able to build the support staff for the long haul. Someone said earlier that analytics can be a zero sum game. Sort of. In cricket you can see times where it's been well used (around the wicket to lefties) and poorly used (over reliance on short balls for prolonged periods). But at some point lefties will likely get better as everyone bowls around the wicket to them. Then, another advantage presents itself as a consequence, and on it goes. But yeah, great read.
The Barry
Roar Guru
The problem with that logic is that it extends to not just the coach but every player on the field… A great halfback never won a comp without a great team around him, therefore halfbacks aren’t important A great prop never won a grand final without a great team around him, therefore props aren’t important, and so on No great front office ever won a comp without a great team, therefore front offices aren’t important. No great physio ever won a comp without a great team, therefore physios aren’t important Would Maguire have won a comp with the Tigers in 2014? Would Nathan Cleary have won a comp with the Bulldogs last year? Would Wally Lewis win a comp with the Gold Coast? None of those statements are evidence that the person in question can’t coach or play You know your footy… surely you can tell the difference between a team that looks well coached and one that looks poorly coached…
The Barry
Roar Guru
Great read Not quite sure I’ve got my head around the philosophy / style side completely Bellamy is the obvious old school, strip the paint off the walls spray type of coach. I’d also argue that he doesn’t have a style. We’ve seen Melbourne teams under his watch play very tight, controlled, choke the opposition out of the game football to free flowing, attack from anywhere of the last couple years. Then there was the ‘total football’ side of 2017. Doesn’t he base his tactics on the personnel he has rather than having his own style that players must mould to? Hasler has been the same. His late 00s team’s style at Manly was very different to the forward interchange passing, halfback-less style with the Dogs in his first few years. Different again to his Turbo led Manly sides. Also doesn’t mind going apoplectic when the mood takes him Bennett has ranged from free flowing almost as lib attack, to hard core defence and back, and back I’m sure at any point in time you could clearly describe the style their sides played with, but they haven’t just stuck to one style throughout their careers
Choppy Zezers
Roar Rookie
Sick article, Mike. Very thought provoking. Really well done. I remember listening to Craig Bellamy. He said in his early days as coaching he would give a player a roast. Now, it's about roasting the team as a whole and not singling anyone out. Cameron C is an interesting study. Trent Barrett was considered a fantastic understudy, communicator and relationship coach. Now he's done and likely won't get another gig.
Redcap
Roar Guru
I'd watch that.
Brett McKay
Expert
Michael, this is seriously good read! There's a lot in it, but some great parallels to other sports, and even a lot of themes that would equally apply to other sports again, but not mentioned. Really, really good insights..
Forty Twenty
Roar Rookie
Plenty of coaches have won a title which shows it's not a unique talent. Get one of the best rosters in the comp and many coaches can win the thing, including many who aren't rated by the punters, ie Mr Cleary. The rarer talent is the few coaches who can coach at the one club for a long time and maintain respect and results with all the bits of the puzzle. I'm not sure they are all that superior in actual coaching the game but they are clearly better at most of the other bits involved.
Tim Carter
Roar Pro
Maybe Reg Reagan should be reprised for a Ted Talk.
Mike Meehall Wood
Editor
I did think of Justin Langer a lot in writing this. Cricket coaches are largely vibes guys anyway tbh.
Mike Meehall Wood
Editor
Longevity is a big part of this - obvs Bellamy has had ages to work out a system and now owns it. Not everyone gets that. But Bellamy is like Alex Ferguson in that respect: he stays atop the system, but constantly promotes change beneath him to stay current. His big bad stick only comes out periodically too - and remember that just because you see him blowing up in the box doesn't mean that he's doing that in the sheds. Sralex's hairdryer was mostly a threat that was rarely used.
Mike Meehall Wood
Editor
Sporting Director/Head Coach model is an interesting analogy for Ikin and Walters. I certainly could see that working in RL. As for the analysts: it's more about the belief that you can be informed by data, which I think Walters does get.
Redcap
Roar Guru
What? Heresy! :boxing: