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Opinion
In any professional team sport, as the saying goes, it’s easier to sack a coach than change the players.
But the problem is rarely the players or the coach – it’s more often than note poor management from above.
The on-field results are a symptom of the bad decisions and lack of accountability at executive level.
Justin Holbrook is the latest coach under the pump with the Titans set to launch a review into their fire season.
After an encouraging return to the playoffs last year which should have progressed into the second week if not for a dopey decision with the try line begging on the final play of the game against the Roosters, expectations were high on the Gold Coast.
The subjective nature of expectations is one of the many reasons why coaches are always under the gun.
If you judge coaches on who has premiership rings and who doesn’t, there’ll be 15 who have supposedly fallen short of the ultimate goal each year. By my back of the napkin calculations that will rise to 16 next year.
Coaches should be judged on whether they have extracted the best out of their roster, not necessarily whether the team has made the finals and definitely not solely based on premiership glory.
(Photo by Ian Hitchcock/Getty Images)
Brian Smith holds the mantle of the coach who oversaw the most first-grade games in premiership history but fell short of seizing the trophy.
That does not mean he was a failure as a coach. Far from it. The 2001 Grand Final loss to Newcastle when he was at the helm of a record-breaking Eels side was his golden chance to get the monkey off his back.
The Knights, with a team that was also stacked with representative stars, stunned Parramatta in the first night-time decider with as perfect a first half of rugby league as you’re ever going to see.
They had this Andrew Johns fella calling the shots with Ben Kennedy rampaging along the edges. The way some people tell the story is that the Eels, after a dominant regular season, were the greatest team of all time and the Knights were no-hopers and the 30-24 result was due to Smith’s coaching. Not so.
In a career that spanned the best part of three decades, his teams over-achieved much more often than not. He started out by making the Illawarra Steelers a competitive outfit in their early years in the 1980s and then dragged St George into a couple of Grand Finals in 1992-93 where they were outclassed in successive years by a Brisbane Broncos side which would not have looked out of place at Origin level.
He took the Eels to the finals in seven of his nine seasons and after a three-year stint in the post-Johns era at Newcastle which was always going to be tough, he completed his career by restoring the Roosters from wooden spooners to grand finalists in 2010 where they ran into a St George Illawarra side which was primed to break its drought.
Smith’s nemesis that day was Wayne Bennett, who was also the coach on the winning side of the ledger in the 1992-93 deciders.
He won six titles during his first 21 seasons at the Broncos, a superb return by any measure but, objectively, he went into virtually every season with a roster capable of winning the title. You could make the argument that five titles or less would have been an underachievement during that timespan when Brisbane’s roster was overflowing with elite talent.
Bennett will see how the other half of the coaching fraternity live next year when he oversees what is looking likely to be a below-average Dolphins roster.
Over the course of Smith’s 601-game career, his overall success rate was just under 51% but if you judge his results on the strength of the rosters at his disposal, you cannot say he didn’t over-achieve.
(Photo by Matt King/Getty Images)
Which is the question the Gold Coast boardroom needs to float when it considers whether Holbrook is the right coach for them.
After inheriting a team which finished with the wooden spoon in 2019 when Garth Brennan was shown the door mid-season, Holbrook has taken a roster filled with journeymen and young prospects to ninth in his first campaign and eighth last season.
They are 3-13 and in last spot after 16 rounds and should be too strong for the bye this weekend to wrap up two very valuable competition points which will propel them to 15th unless the Tigers upset Parramatta.
The Titans are paying the price for trying to skip a step in the process. They offloaded experienced half Jamal Fogarty in the off-season after Canberra identified him as the playmaker to pair alongside Jack Wighton after the George Williams stint ended in acrimonious circumstances 12 months ago.
Fogarty was the steady hand they needed as their on-field general while Toby Sexton found his feet at NRL level, particularly with a running five-eighth in AJ Brimson as his halves partner, himself new to the position while Jayden Campbell settled into the rigours of being a first-grade fullback.
(Photo by Ian Hitchcock/Getty Images)
With a tackling machine in Erin Clark at hooker, the spine lacks experience and attacking potency.
And that has a flow-on effect for marquee forward David Fifita, who has shown an inability or an unwillingness to be as involved as the Titans need him to be.
There’s a happy medium between Fifita taking too many hit-ups through the middle and spending a surplus of time out wide loitering with the centres waiting for the ball to come his way.
Holbrook has not been able to come up with a formula that gets the best out of Fifita and when more than 10% of your salary cap is tied up in a second-rower, you will go nowhere fast in the NRL if you don’t maximise the return on that seven-figure investment.
The beleaguered coach, who is contracted until the end of 2023, has certainly under-achieved this year after two positive campaigns.
Gold Coast need to ask whether they believe he can turn their fortunes around but also whether there are people higher up the food chain who can look in the mirror and say they haven’t contributed to their current malaise.