Opinion
Brad Fittler is on his last legs as NSW coach. Or so we’re led to believe.
If the Blues do the unthinkable and win the final two games of the series, then surely Freddie earns a reprieve and an extension, but if Queensland take the shield for the third time in four years, NSW hierarchy will be looking for a new clipboard holder.
Discussions over the past few days have thrown up a number of potential candidates, but no one that everyone seems to agree ticks all the boxes.
The Johns brothers don’t sound interested, a current NRL coach couldn’t handle both jobs, Craig Bellamy and Laurie Daley have had their crack, and no one quite knows what the likes of Des Hasler or Geoff Toovey, both former NRL coaches, would bring to the table.
In short, there is no one knocking the door down as the obvious next man up.
So what do NSW actually need in a coach? Do you need years of proven NRL head coaching experience? Billy Slater would argue that you don’t. Do you need NRL-level tactical nous? Mal Meninga would suggest you can get that through your assistants.
What separates these two teams each year? Actually not that much. The one percenters. The effort plays. It makes all the difference at this level. You need a coach that can have the players primed to give their best effort, over and over again, until the 80th minute.
You need a coach that players will run through brick walls for. So how about a left-field option? Why not former Wallabies, and current Lebanon league coach Michael Cheika?
Michael Cheika (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)
Cheika has his faults as a coach, that’s for sure, but short-term motivation isn’t one of them.
He was thrown up this week as an option for St George Illawarra, but the ins and outs of guiding a team over a full, gruelling NRL season is not Cheika’s strength.
His strength is swinging a golf club in a dressing room and appealing to the hearts and minds of his players. Does that work over a long season? Most likely not. But can it work for three games a year? You bet it can.
There would be no shortage of quality assistant coaches that Cheika could draw on to round out his rugby league knowledge. That’s the easy part.
The hard part is getting NSW players to understand the importance of chasing back a dinky chip in the 77th minute, instead of being run past by a front-rower. And that’s what Cheika could bring. Motivation. Buckets of it. And the players would have all year to recover before they had to listen to him again.
Of course there’s a thousand reasons it might not work. But there are reasons any of the options might not work. In simple terms, Cheika is an international rugby league coach looking for a job. That should be enough to have him in the conversation.
You don’t need to have played Origin to get it. Cheika gets it. He loves NSW, he knows how to get players to respond and improve quickly, but most importantly he brings an intensity that the Blues badly need.
Cheika got Lebanon up and through to the World Cup quarter finals, not on tactics, but on heart and effort. And he could do the same for NSW.
It might be desperate. But I would argue NSW, if they lose this series, will be getting pretty desperate.
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Channel 9 have contacted Fox League for comment after vision emerged of the NRL journalist's fight with a member of the public.
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