Round 13: Coaches Always Say The Darndest Things…If They Were Allowed To

There are few more difficult occupations than head coach of an NRL team. The long hours, the travel, the (general) struggles to execute plans and strategy on game day as discussed and rehearsed over hours and days on the training field, the rigid salary cap (and how it makes ongoing success very difficult to achieve) are all frustrating enough. Only the very best coaches can overcome this have a genuine shot at early October glory; everyone else has to hope for a relatively well off club to help re-tool the team for next season, and that this re-tooling does not involve the signing of a new coach. Job security is certainly not a reason to get into coaching.

However, there is the possibility of respite for these beleaguered men. They have the opportunity – in theory – several times a week to vent their many frustrations about referees, officials, perceived injustices from various sources, soon-to-be or previous opposition coaches or players, the scheduling of matches….any number of things.

But as we all know, coaches look upon these media commitments with about as much joy as major dental work. They know that media commitments are necessary to give the club (and their sponsors) valuable exposure, but they also know they can’t speak out of line about officials, they can’t speak poorly of a recent or future opponent and that they can’t do anything but praise individual players on their team.

The result: cliché filled, monotonous, cue-it-up-and-play-it-again, 7-second sound bites from some of the sharper minds in the game (with the possible exception of Brad Fittler).

How interesting, how entertaining could NRL press conferences be if coaches always said what they felt? Well, this week’s Tuesday Roast will attempt to provide something of a snapshot into the minds of a number of coaches after the just-completed round of matches.

“Geez, I don’t know how we butchered that game tonight. Even though we gave them stacks of ball in the first half, we were still in it then we dominated but could only get one try (and even that was dodgy as). Then we just capitulated against them like we did last time. Tuiaki, what on earth was he thinking going for that intercept? But it’s all good. We’re bad at winning 50/50 games, we haven’t made the finals since 2005, yet you all love me, neutrals love watching us and my job is safe. Cheers!” Tim Sheens, Coach Wests Tigers

The first of an intriguing round of NRL was at Leichhardt on Friday where Penrith took on the Tigers. Penrith have dominated the Tigers over many years, but the absence of Michael Jennings and Jarrod Sammut – as well as the Tigers desperately needing a win to keep in touch with the top 8 – meant a very even first 70 minutes.

Ultimately, the game was won by Penrith’s ability to absorb sustained Tigers pressure then respond similarly (which seemed to surprise the Tigers). The absence of Jennings and Sammut meant Penrith found it a little difficult to cash in on a number of Tigers errors in the first half, but Penrith’s desperate defence (especially two try-saving tackles by Elford) was pivotal. On the back of this, players such as Aiton, Waterhouse, Tighe and Luke Walsh willed Penrith down the field time and time again in the final 10 minutes, where 3 late tries saw the scoreline blowout.

A final word: has the video referee pendulum started to swing in the other direction after the Jarryd Hayne no-try from last Wednesday night? Robbie Farah’s try in this game was given despite massive doubt: Benji Marshall’s last-tackle desperation pass to Farah probably belonged at the SFS on Saturday night. His right arm or the ball may not have touched the ground before the pass to Farah, but his left arm – which assisted the pass to Farah – was definitely on the ground. Nevertheless, the try was allowed. Was this the start of a ‘benefit of the doubt’ plague? Or was it once again the continued application of an extremely pedantic view of the rules? It could argued that both of these have an element of truth to them, but the awarding of some dubious tries in this game and in the Monday night game suggests ‘ohhhh just give the damn TRY!’ brigade will be happier in coming weeks.

“Geez that was easy. Like I said, at the end of the day, when Locky’s not playing, again youse know you’re basically certainties against Brisbane. And we even did it with our main forwards all starting off the bench. Even though Wayne has gone, like I said, that one was sa-weet.” Craig Bellamy, Coach Melbourne Storm

It was a Storm win from the 2006-2008 era in the other Friday game. Most impressive perhaps was the display of Storm depth, especially in the forwards, but also with the impressive young reserve winger Joseph Tomane. But the fragility of Brisbane was somewhat alarming. Lockyer, of course, is a big loss for Brisbane, but they still had the NSW halfback and most of their available forwards, yet Melbourne thrashed them. The cross-kick to Folau does not solve everything…

“Finally – FINALLY – the boys pulled their finger out and played something like how they can! I suppose at least it didn’t come after I got the sack, small consolation I guess, but geez guys, might have been nice if you showed some signs of it a few months ago! Surely they didn’t just play like that because Big Artie’s here? Even though we lost by 20, Manly was pretty scared there for a while, so yeh hopefully we can do this a bit more often and scare some more good teams, but seriously I won’t be holding my breath.” Brad Fittler, Coach Sydney Roosters

This game looked like being a fairly routine Manly win until the Roosters burst out of their six-week torpor and made this a very competitive game. Manly realised they were in a game (when perhaps they weren’t expecting to be) but it was a rare situation for them this season: they were in a contest with a team many expected them to defeat easily. They found this task to be fairly difficult and if it wasn’t for some fortunate plays (the loose ball bouncing to Wolfman, some dubious penalties and Matt Awful actually executing several kicks as he intended), the Roosters could very well have won the game.

They certainly deserved a better outcome than to lose by 20, as they provided some of the more entertaining tries seen this season. They put on two tries involving long runs, some deft passing but most importantly an attitude to attack wherever possible. Shaun Kenny-Dowall was a consistent threat down the left; his body shape is not dissimilar to Greg Inglis and occasionally he makes a play which reminds you of Inglis.

This shows how even the NRL is: even the team running last has players more than capable of making excellent plays. The Roosters might even threaten the Dragon-killing Gold Coast this coming weekend, especially if injuries/illness significantly affect the Titan line-up.

“Just wanted to say to all my critics – where are you now? Thought it was a bit quiet in here. If any of them were here, they might say I’m riding JT’s coattails, but you’d have to be blind to not see how much better everyone in the team is playing. I don’t want to jinx us but we are SSSSSSMOKINGGGG right now!” Neil Henry, Coach North Queensland Cowbores

The winning run of North Queensland continued on Saturday night when they thrashed Souths. This game had a number of potential danger signals for the Cowbores: after a few very good games, it is difficult for any team to maintain a good run in the NRL (especially during representative season), also Souths has been a bogey team of the Cowbores the last few seasons and they have performed quite well against good teams this season.

But another Souths trait has been poor play when backing up 5 days after their past game and this continued on Saturday night. Meanwhile, the Cowbores’ great run continued. Feral Thurston was once again at his best, O’Donnell was also very good and their unsung forward heroes (Tronc, Bolton, Payne etc) continued their excellent form. After a slow start, the Cowbores are perhaps the best team at the moment: Neil Henry is not usually prone to public shows of emotion, but he must be tempted to unleash on those who attacked his coaching in recent months.

“Coaching the Warriors has to be the hardest job in the NRL, luckily I am a man of infinite patience (this must be why my contract was extended last week, surely it can’t be for my performance). I’ve got no idea when the boys are going to turn up. We only hammered home the importance of this game ALL WEEK LONG and that Cronulla would be desperate after having crapped the bed at home since Round 2, but still we put in that pathetic excuse of an effort in the first 20 minutes and basically cost ourselves the game. The second half was great; I reckon we would have come back against a number of other teams but Cronulla wanted it too much, well done to them. But who knows how we’re going to play against Newcastle. We might fire up, we might not. I have no idea.” Ivan Cleary, Coach New Zealand Warriors

It probably wasn’t a surprise that Cronulla started strongly against the Warriors, but it was something of a surprise that Cronulla looked vaguely like a team that knew how to score tries (after not doing so all season) and that the also-desperate Warriors did not also start strongly. There was an element of luck to Cronulla’s first two tries but they fully deserved their 18-nil lead; their play was open and positive, which suited the good conditions and the (relatively) large crowd of locals.

The game started to turn around from about the half hour mark, due to the Warriors realising the extent of their problems and Cronulla not having led anyone by 18 points in the first half since John Lang coached them. Cronulla’s increasingly inexperienced team made this lack of familiarity with their wonderful situation even worse. The increasingly maligned Stacey Jones played his best game since returning to the NRL and, in doing so, lifted the Warriors almost single-handedly back into the game (although Steve Price’s effort to play almost the whole game after Origin cannot go unmentioned).

The Warriors have long been a threat to comeback on sunny afternoons away from home after conceding a big lead, but Cronulla’s enthusiasm and effort in defence proved too much and they ultimately triumphed in a highly entertaining game. The ship has almost sailed on the Warriors’ annual second-half surge but the arrival of Newcastle to Auckland next Friday night could be the challenge they need to resuscitate their season. Meanwhile, Cronulla could be a f#$%^ good chance at playing spoiler for much higher teams from now on if they can reproduce this effort.

“Everyone will accuse me of talking our team down by me saying this, but it’s true, go and look and the scores, ladder positions at the time and the match reports: people say we’re a good chance to win the comp, but we can’t string two good games together. I love our team (I should, I put it together) so I reckon we’re going to start with a run of consistency soon, but it’s pretty annoying. Parra tried hard, but if we’re near our best, Parra aren’t close to us. I guess I got a bit arrogant by not starting De Gois or Hilder and resting Simpson and that might have given Parra the confidence boost to start the game they needed to get them over us, but still…disappointing. We were so bad I can’t even seriously blame the various refereeing mistakes that went against us – now that’s saying something.” Brian Smith, Coach Newcastle Knights

While the conspiracy theorists might suggest that the Newcastle – Parramatta fixture was ‘manipulated’ by Channel 9 to ensure a close contest and hence improve ratings, in hindsight a close game between these teams should not have been a surprise. Newcastle – for some reason – continued their streak of unusually poor play in odd-numbered rounds, while Parramatta’s ‘off-on’ habit which started in Round 8 was seen again (impressive efforts against North Queensland, Souths and Newcastle were interspersed with poor play against Manly and Cronulla).

Despite the wildly divergent performances by these teams, this was another very entertaining game. Parramatta’s great play went largely unrewarded for much of the game, which kept the struggling Knights in with a shot. Finally, more Parramatta attacking enterprise was rewarded (albeit with a perhaps dubious penalty) before the victory was sealed by second-gamer Mortimer’s chip kick and subsequent regather.

Interestingly, the NRL clubs faring worst on the ladder have all responded with much improved efforts in recent weeks. Unfortunately for Parramatta, their next opponent is the team due to experience a turnaround (if the trend continues), the Wests Tigers. In addition, Parramatta’s ‘off-on’ habit might come into play, as they haven’t lost to the Tigers since about 1975: complacency could make an appearance next Monday night. But speaking as a many times scarred Tigers supporter, I’ll believe this when I see it.

“Just quietly, we had this game circled on the calendar for a while, especially after they bashed us up in Wollongong earlier in the year and I’m stoked we dominated such a highly regarded forward pack (even though they were missing a few important guys). But most importantly, ever since I had a cry about the refs a few weeks back, now we’re getting most of the 50/50 calls. The system works!” John Cartwright, Coach Gold Coast Titans

It would not be a surprise if the swine flu uncertainty leading up to last night’s game is how this game will be remembered in the months and years to come, but it would also be unfortunate, since this was probably one of the more significant games in the (short) history of the Titans. On occasion, their forward pack and their intensity across the park has been at a high level, but in general, their reputation as a soft-ish team is well deserved.

However, the line was clearly drawn in the sand before last night’s game: the Titans had had enough. Enough of being called soft. Enough of losing to the Dragons (this feeling was no doubt strengthened with the sight of several thousand Dragons supporters – including the GST guy – at one end of the ground). Enough of being flashy and not the bully. The Titans’ first 25 minutes or so was not only one of the more dominant displays in recent years, but one of the most unbelievable (given that it took place against the previously stingy Dragons’ defence). They dominated almost every contest, which meant fast play-the-balls, a retreating defence and hence a great platform for the Titans’ attack.

That said, the Titans were somewhat lucky, with some fortuitous bounces from kicks as well as receiving the benefit of what looked to be a massive doubt (and also with the Dragons being denied what would have been the game’s first try for what looked to be a dubious penalty). But they were by far the better team and thoroughly deserved their 22-2 half-time lead.

The Dragons did just enough to stay in the game and made the most of a tiring/injured opposition and some dubious refereeing calls to come back into the game, although they always looked like being a little short of time. In the end, despite their best efforts, the Dragons had only one play to win the game and that came following a kick-off.

It was a great comeback for a team regarded as having a fairly barren attack, but the Titans’ efforts to almost demolish the Dragons in the first half and then hold on amidst a growing injury toll deserved the most praise.

That ends this week’s Roast. With any luck, we will see some press conferences similar to the fictional ones described above; perhaps the coaches can blame Swine Flu (and light-headedness) for any irrational outbursts! See you next week.

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