Mal Meninga column: Anthony Milford can learn from Michael Morgan
THERE is one thing Anthony Milford should be doing if he is to combine his silky playmaking with the game management the Broncos desperately need, writes Mal Meninga.
Opinion
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THE biggest question about the Broncos this season is hanging over the heads of their halves.
With Ben Hunt now at the Dragons, Anthony Milford and Kodi Nikorima will be running the show — and I have used that phrase deliberately.
Both Milford and Nikorima are gifted players, brilliant individuals who can swing a game on their own.
And you see, that’s the problem. They both are.
They are both brilliant attacking players, they are both instinctive players with terrific running games.
So if they are both individually brilliant, which they are, who is running the show?
Who is the game manager, steering the team around the park, implementing game plans and directing traffic.
From all reports, Milford seems to be taking on that responsibility in Hunt’s absence.
That move only raises more questions — most notably, if Milford is busy running the show, is that going to take the edge off his role as the game-breaker the Broncos need?
They are big questions. But there is a solution to be found, about 1500km up the road. His name is Michael Morgan.
Milford should have spent his off-season watching every game from Morgan’s amazing 2017 season.
Like Milford, Morgan is a brilliant attacking player.
But when Johnathan Thurston went down with injury most people expected the Cowboys’ season to go into a nosedive because JT’s brilliance, vision and game management were gone.
It all landed on Morgan’s shoulders.
History now shows that burden was the making of Michael Morgan.
By stepping up as a player and leader, he inherited the leadership of the Cowboys, even if the (c) was not beside his name in the program.
Rather than suffocate his running game, the responsibility of organising the team took Morgan to another level as a player. Because he was the one reading and controlling the game, he was able to pick and choose the times when his running game could have the most impact.
Milford needs to learn the lesson Morgan provided because for the Broncos — like the Cowboys experienced last year with JT’s injury — there is no other option.
Watching how Morgan adjusts to Thurston’s return this year will be just as interesting as watching him live without him in 2017.
Morgan, being the selfless team man that he is, has volunteered to step back and let Thurston run the show in his last year in the NRL.
It only makes the Cowboys more dangerous, with Thurston likely to be playing both sides of the field and Morgan prowling around behind the line in a roving role.
TIME TO SCRAP PRE-SEASON TRIALS
RUGBY league fans everywhere will be overjoyed that the season proper is about to get under way but there will be one group of people even happier that the real stuff is about to begin — the coaches.
The risks for the coaches during the pre-season are monumental, to the stage where the question needs to be asked about why we really need to play trials at all.
This pre-season, the injury toll has been comparatively light.
The Broncos, Cowboys and Storm were probably the worst hit.
Brisbane lost their new import Andre Savelio for the season with a knee injury.
The Cowboys have lost centre Kane Linnett for half the year with a pectoral tear, and fullback Jahrome Hughes is out for the Storm for a long period with a dislocated shoulder.
The coaches must be wondering what benefit they got from the trials considering the price they paid with injury.
Ironically, those clubs are probably the three clubs in the league with the least to gain from playing trials because they already have established combinations.
So why play them at all? Professional global sporting teams play their pre-season trials in-house, so why isn’t rugby league doing the same?
Of course, I’m not talking about “trial” games that actually have some meaning.
I think the World Club Challenge is an important part of rugby league’s global ambitions and a traditional event like the Charity Shield is an important part of the fabric of the game.
But what are coaches taking out of a game between a second-string Broncos team and a second-string Gold Coast team in Toowoomba?
Nothing. It’s a waste of time. If the NRL are concerned about player welfare, scrap pre-season trials.
Start the season earlier, make Origin a stand-alone event where non-rep players can get a break and bring regular end-of-season Tests back on the agenda.
Originally published as Mal Meninga column: Anthony Milford can learn from Michael Morgan
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