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Opinion
Winners come in all shapes and sizes in rugby league. It’s not always the biggest, fastest and strongest who prevail.
As a player, Kevin Walters was probably never in the top half of his team in any of those three categories but he made up for his lack of athletic prowess by being one of the smartest players of his generation.
And one of the most successful at club level.
Walters played in seven grand finals – after being on the losing side in his first one with Canberra in 1987, he won six premierships at the Raiders two years later then with the Broncos in 1992, 93, 97, 98 and 2000.
Michael Hancock was the only other player to feature in all five of Brisbane’s premierships in their nine-year golden era.
When you look at the names ahead of Walters for Grand Final appearances in premiership history, St George legends Norm Provan and Brian Clay with 10, Eddie Lumsden, Ron Coote and Cooper Cronk with nine and John Raper, Cameron Smith and Kevin Ryan with eight, he trails only some of the greats of the game on that list.
(Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)
Not that he is often afforded the accolades that should come with a player who made 291 first-grade appearances, represented Queensland 20 times and Australia in 12 matches (which would have been higher if not for the Super League war).
His contemporaries Allan Langer, Shane Webcke, Darren Lockyer, Gorden Tallis and Petero Civoniceva are in the NRL Hall of Fame and you could make a strong case that Walters should be the next Broncos great to receive that honour.
Walters was constantly under-rated as a player, labelled the second banana to Langer in the halves for Brisbane and Queensland or not a patch on NSW rivals Brad Fittler and Laurie Daly when it came to the best five-eighths in the competition.
But his instincts were top notch – honed from years of backyard footy with brothers Steve and Kerrod growing up in Ipswich.
His greatest asset was knowing when and where to attack. And that is now shining through with the Broncos.
With Adam Reynolds calling the shots on the field, Walters has a similar player to himself who knows when to send forwards up the middle and when to spiral the pass to the speedsters out wide.
Walters has often joked that it was a no-brainer for someone like himself to get the ball out to the thoroughbreds on his outside during his playing days like Steve Renouf, Wendell Sailor, Willie Carne and Darren Lockyer.
In Reece Walsh, Selwyn Cobbo, Herbie Farnworth and Kotoni Staggs, Reynolds now has that luxury to know that half-chances will more often than not be finished off by a potent backline of athletic freaks.
Now that Walters has had success in the NRL coaching ranks, it begs the question as to why it took so long for a player who was such an astute tactician to get his shot.
He bounced around at the Storm and had three tumultuous stints as an assistant at Brisbane under Wayne Bennett either side of a modest two-season stint in the Super League with Catalans more than a decade ago.
Perhaps it was his self-deprecating nature which hurt his cause but even after he had won two out of four Origin series during what was supposed to be a time of rebuilding for the Maroons as their golden generation faded into retirement, the doubters still outweighed the believers.
(Photo by Jeremy Ng/Getty Images)
When Craig Bellamy shunned the Broncos’ advances to replace Wayne Bennett five years ago, the club opted for a coach coming off one successful rookie season in Anthony Seibold ahead of Walters.
It was almost a case of “we’ve tried every other option, we might as well give Kevvie a go” when Brisbane finally handed him the reins at the end of 2020 when the Seibold experiment imploded inside two seasons on the way to the perennial powerhouse’s first wooden spoon.
Whether they like it or not, Walters’ coaching style mirrors Bennett’s in the way that team camaraderie is their first priority over intricate game plans.
While they could not be more different in media conferences with Walters joking around with reporters while Bennett torments them with blunt responses, in the inner sanctum of the squad they each build on-field success via off-field harmony.
There were plenty of critics quick to seize on shortsighted podcast comments by Cobbo and Tyson Gamble last off-season in which they questioned Walters’ coaching credentials.
Gamble, who was on his way out of Red Hill to link with Newcastle, suggested Reynolds was the real mastermind of the team.
In a sign of Walters’ lack of ego and maturity as a mentor even though he was just two years into his maiden stint as an NRL head coach, he responded by saying Gamble’s comments were “a positive” for their team.
“I got coached by Wayne Bennett for 10 years and it wasn’t just him I got information from,” he said at the time.
Coaches are not the only source of tactical nous in a rugby league team. It would be foolish for anyone to think so or for a club to allow that to be the case.
(Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)
Peter Sterling was the tactical whiz who drove Parramatta through their Jack Gibson glory days in the 1980s, ditto for Ricky Stuart as he refined Tim Sheens’ instructions at Canberra.
You can go down the line of successful sides to see that coaches can only do so much but you need a Darren Lockyer, Cameron Smith or Cooper Cronk to be the on-field brains of the operation.
Walters also brought in Lee Briers this year as an assistant to provide extra refinement for their game plans, particularly for Brisbane’s spine to be thinking several steps ahead on the field as they pilot the team to where they can launch their attacking raids.
After entering the 2023 season on the hot seat as one of the coaches most likely to get the chop, the 55-year-old not only outlasted the likes of Anthony Griffin and Justin Holbrook but he’s scored a new deal for two more years.
And now he’s just 80 minutes away from becoming the first premiership-winning player since Des Hasler in 2008 to also lift the trophy as a coach.
All he’s got to do is bring down the all-conquering Penrith Panthers.
If he achieves that monumental feat then even his harshest critic will have to concede that Walters definitely can coach.