State of Origin 2017: Where do Laurie Daley and New South Wales go from here?
THE future of Laurie Daley as New South Wales coach is uncertain. Where do he and the Blues go from here, asks PAUL KENT.
THEY inspire a burst of phone calls on Thursday morning but, with the good news, they are the kind that induce only mild panic.
Kevin Walters is somewhere, he later says, on Cloud 12, saying he left Cloud Nine long ago.
Don’t mistake that for thinking he is on a plane.
His truth is he has not been to bed since Queensland won their game more than 12 hours earlier and at this moment Walters is short odds to even make the flight to Sydney. Walters, you all know, is booked for his regular stint on NRL360.
Laurie Daley is somewhere else altogether.
Unlike Walters, Daley has been to bed. Like Walters, he hasn’t slept.
A thousand thoughts must go through your head at times like this. All vivid, none real.
Walters makes it to Fox Sports somewhere around his usual time in the late afternoon and the evidence of the night before, the hour’s sleep on the plane his only rest, is clear.
Half an hour later Daley comes in looking in slightly better touch and straight away you know this is one of the great acting performances you have seen from a coach.
It speaks to everything about the quality of Laurie Daley.
He knows Walters is celebrating and he does not want to take from him by dropping the bottom lip in his company.
His first action is to put out a hand to Walters and congratulate him on winning the series.
It is the second year Walters has beaten Daley in the annual muscle-fest that is State of Origin and nobody knows this better than Daley, who wears the loss hard, but he sits and smiles and shakes his head.
“Just not good enough,” he says.
Later, on air, Daley supports all 17 of his players to be picked next year. At the same time he gives no indication on his own future.
His contract is up and he has won one series from five. No coach has survived that.
Privately he says he has already made his decision but he is waiting a fortnight more before telling everybody, just so he is sure he is sure.
Depending whom you talk to, Daley is quitting or has already decided he wants to go on.
What is certain is that if he quits things will change and, if he goes on, things have to change.
Just when the Blues thought they arrived in Origin, beating the Maroons convincingly in Origin I, Queensland showed that as far they have come they have further to go.
The Blues have spoken for years about the patience needed to rebuild their program.
Yet Queensland has done it in a series.
Seven changes were made after the first game loss and eight players made their debut in this series.
And yet NSW is still trying to figure it out.
Andrew Johns and Phil Gould were 100 per cent correct in their analysis after the game.
Gould spoke of Queensland’s senior playing group educating the group as they come in.
“They just don’t get,” Johns said of the Blues.
Walters spoke as much waiting in the green room before Daley arrived when somebody discussed Cameron Munster’s performance at five-eighth on debut.
“The Melbourne guys had no doubt he’d handle it,” Walters says. “They just knew.”
The Queensland culture is player driven. It’s twin pillars are honesty and accountability.
It’s selection criteria is character driven.
The NSW culture is a facsimile.
The Blues look over the fence at what Queensland do and copy it. Mal Meninga was appointed coach on the grounds of being an Origin legend and so the NSW Rugby League chased Daley.
The Maroons went looking for a candidate with similar qualities when Meninga moved on and Walters was appointed.
Daley’s future is now uncertain and NSWRL chairman George Peponis asked who out there was better placed than Daley to coach the Blues. The rider was he could not be an NRL coach.
The question is, why can’t he be?
“They need a professional coach,” Gould said on Wednesday.
In this world, where if Queensland cough then NSW suddenly has a cold, why does the NSW coach have to be NRL free just because the Queensland coach is?
Crediting Queensland’s success to Meninga and Walters’ independence from club football completely overlooks the players they have had at their disposal. Cameron Smith, Darren Lockyer, Johnathan Thurston, Cooper Cronk and Billy Slater.
Some of the best the game has seen in crucial positions.
The Blues speak of character. They speak to it but it is not a true assessment.
A NSW player rocks up his first day of camp as drunk as three sailors and the Blues close around him, isolating him from his responsibilities
Culture is player driven.
Others examples of poor behaviour also drift out of camp yet the actions are smothered, not dealt with.
What does this say about what standards NSW is willing to accept?
Daley has been too good for his players. Given them the benefit of the doubt too many times.
The faith he showed his team was not returned.
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Daley’s adviser, Peter Sterling, said before the game they looked back at Game II, when the Blues led 16-6 at halftime but got run down, and so they saw no reason to change the line-up despite what happened.
So why is he surprised it happened again?
Everything that went wrong in the final 20 minutes of Game II went wrong for the entire 80 minutes of Game III.
The Blues got their priorities wrong.
Much was made of picking the same team for all three games, just like they had in 1996.
Difference was, the 1996 lot won all three games.
When Queensland lost Game I they adjusted and got it right. They got rid of the wrong players and replaced them with the right players.
NSW got lost, Daley focusing on retaining the players he had grown close to, his adviser also getting too close when he needed to have the perspective of distance to warn the man he was advising.
In identifying what went wrong they failed to determine why it went wrong.
It had nothing to do with simple errors and everything to do with mental toughness.
CONFIDENCE CAN BE LOUD OR QUIET
SUBLIME, ridiculous, and all that.
Two press conferences this week showed the vast differences in how we like our sport promoted but also, crucially and without the notice of many, there was a refreshing similarity.
On the one hand, Roger Federer spoke up his Wimbledon semi-final against Tomas Berdych last night by saying, “I’m rested. I’m fresh. I’m confident, too. Then great things do happen. Confidence is a huge thing.”
He certainly did not try to talk himself down or try to claim underdog status to relieve the pressure, as happens so often locally.
Meanwhile, Conor McGregor hypes his fight against Floyd Mayweather.
“You’re 40 f ... ing years of age. Learn to dress,” McGregor told Mayweather after saying he dressed l”like a 12-year-old boy”.
“You’re carrying a schoolbag on stage. What do you need a schoolbag for? You can’t even read.”
McGregor resumed for round two: “Is this mic on?” McGregor said. “On the count of three, I want everyone in this arena to scream at the top of their lungs, ‘F ... the Mayweathers!’”
Confidence is confidence.
Importantly, two vastly different sports have shown their understanding of the need to promote.
Originally published as State of Origin 2017: Where do Laurie Daley and New South Wales go from here?