Opinion
The notion of a five-year plan in the NRL is a source of great amusement when summing up the efforts of some under-performing clubs but every team should have one.
Whether your club is one of the few genuine title contenders, stuck in mid-table mediocrity or propping up the bottom of the ladder, it needs a long-term road map to navigate the bumps and turns of the NRL journey.
Phil Gould cops plenty of scorn from critics in the media – both the social and mainstream varieties – over any such five-year plan being in effect at Canterbury after he was roasted for not sticking to one at Penrith by continually hitting the reset button.
He claimed it was purely “media gibberish” that there ever was one at the Panthers and what he actually said when he took control of the beleaguered club in 2012 was that it would take five years for them to get back into premiership contention.
They actually exceeded those expectations when Ivan Cleary guided a young squad to the prelim finals in 2014 but was prematurely sacked a year later because Gould thought he looked tired after they had plummeted to 11th the following season.
(Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)
Back to the present day and Gould’s Bulldogs would kill for a sniff of the finals under Cameron Ciraldo after falling well short of expectations to finish 15th.
They’re relatively lucky to even be that high because they’ve been the worst team in the competition for large parts of the season, reflected in the fact they have the largest negative points differential from having by far the leakiest defence and an attack only slightly better than wooden spooners-elect Wests Tigers.
Parramatta were brave/foolhardy enough to unveil their bold plan in 2015, which they called their “2020 Vision”. Puntastic.
It was to “be the best sporting organisation in Australia, where the very best people aspire to deliver excellence, unity and success”.
The first two aims on their checklist which also covered financial and membership goals were to “compete in the NRL finals series every year, and bring home the club’s fifth and sixth premierships between now and 2020”.
For a club that hasn’t won a title since before Kylie Minogue was doing the Locomotion and had become a laughing stock on the back of successive wooden spoons, their plan was ambitious to say the least.
Highlighting this eight years later is not to rub their noses in it but merely to show that grand plans take more than PowerPoint presentations and plenty of rhetoric to come to fruition.
The Eels have done well to feature in four of the seven playoff series since they launched their vision and unless fortune smiles on them over the closing matches of the season, that record will slip to a 50% success rate very soon.
As for the hunt for the fifth and sixth premierships, they got close last year but the next few seasons are going to be rough.
They bit back when talk of their premiership window closing was raised after the Grand Final loss to Penrith due to the fact they were losing Isaiah Papali’i, Reed Mahoney, Marata Niukore, Oregon Kaufusi and Ray Stone.
(Photo by Mark Evans/Getty Images)
Unfortunately those damn haters were right. They have a solid side with very good players but not one automatic Origin selection in their ranks.
The hardest part about any long-term plan for a club is that fortunes can change quicker than expected, both in a good and bad way.
This year the Warriors are living the dream of a team that has vastly overachieved. The Cowboys did likewise last season.
But it’s not a linear progression – just because new coach Andrew Webster has revamped the Warriors from whipping boys to third-placed surprise packed doesn’t mean they will remain title contenders, as evidenced by the Cowboys this season.
(Photo by Dave Rowland/Getty Images)
The NRL contract system adds to the complexity of trying to plan years down the track.
Because players still become free agents at November 1 before the final season of their contract, clubs need to hedge their bets by either going all in to ink a deal on the expectation that the player will be worth the investment or let them go into free agency and potentially drive up their asking price.
The difference between the well run clubs and those who keep making the same mistakes is stark in a competition which should have relative parity given that each team has the same salary cap.
How the Wests Tigers have managed to miss the finals for 12 straight years and are now about to collect their second wooden spoon shows serious flaws from the front office down which have never been addressed.
(Photo by Ian Hitchcock/Getty Images)
“If you sit in on a poker game and don’t see a sucker, get up. You’re the sucker.” It’s a quote made famous by Warren Buffett which supposedly originated from a card shark going by the name of Amarillo Slim.
Converted to rugby league speak, the Tigers bigwigs should have that feeling whenever they meet up with their counterparts from the other clubs. But clearly they have not made any such realisation.
It’s a tired line for sports columnists to quote Mike Tyson’s claim that everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.
For the Tigers it’s more a case of they can’t put any plan into action without delivering themselves an uppercut or three.
Their five-year plan is more like Adam Sandler’s elderly nemesis Sid in Big Daddy: “What is it? Don’t die.”
Clubs should all basically have variations on three long-term plans – maintaining, consolidating and rebuilding.
Penrith, South Sydney and Melbourne are probably the only three clubs who should be in maintaining mode at the moment after several years in the finals.
Even if the Rabbitohs fall short this season, their roster situation is still pretty good so there’s no need for a rebuild any time soon.
For the rest they need to be consolidating, teams like Brisbane, Cronulla and the Warriors, who are close to title success but need to make a few more tweaks.
Or rebuilding, with the cellar-dwelling trio of St George Illawarra, Canterbury and the Tigers the obvious candidates for that category.
For the rest of the teams somewhere in the middle of the ladder, it’s a dilemma to work out whether you need to take a step or two backwards to ultimately go forward or whether to stay on the present course.
No one wants to be rebuilding but it’s a necessary evil for any club to have sustained success.
Most club execs will be in denial by saying they are on a path to the top even when their team remains mired in mediocrity. Because if they say otherwise their jobs come into question.
And nobody plans for that.
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