If NRL clubs want success, they must first be honest about their failings
For so many in professional sport, the rarefied air of elite clubs can rob the players of perspective. If NRL clubs want success, they must first be honest about their failings, writes PAUL KENT.
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As is his way, Cooper Cronk was caught on change-room cameras several weeks back picking up scraps of tape and tissue and dropping them in the rubbish bin.
This was no sometime thing for Cronk. This was a habit with a very good reason.
Cleaning change rooms is popular with all the best teams in world sport. It is a metaphor borrowed from the excellent book Legacy, about the New Zealand All Blacks, the lesson being that nobody looks after the All Blacks but themselves.
The All Blacks underwent an entire rebuild after losing the 2003 and 2007 World Cups. Even greater than the change-room metaphor was a story that did not make it into the book, the story that began their journey.
Credit where credit's due.
— NRL Roast (@TheNRLRoast) May 4, 2019
Cooper Cronk the ultimate professional#legend
Video Credit - Fox Sports pic.twitter.com/od3B5vHVZQ
The All Blacks called in an expert who told them there were three states of being for sports teams.
The first he called Space Mountain, like the Disneyland ride. They were on the rollercoaster, in pitch dark, unaware of where they were going and with no control if they did.
This was the worst state a sports team could be in. This is where Canterbury are currently fighting back from. Where the Gold Coast Titans can’t escape.
The second was whitewater rafting. Teams were in the raft but they had their helmets and their safety vests and paddles, they could see the boulders and rapids approaching and they could work together to find their way through.
The third he called America’s Cup. Everything was state of the art. They were on clear water with the best equipment available and nothing stood in the way of them doing their best job.
The All Blacks were told they were America’s Cup and they smiled. Where they needed to be, they were then told, was whitewater rafting.
Their World Cup experiences showed they could not handle adversity. The moment an unplanned problem surfaced — a bad call, a dropped ball, trailing late in the game — they were unable to effectively work their way out of it.
NRL teams are in an arm’s race to be America’s Cup with no real understanding they risk a terrible mistake.
On Monday, Parramatta’s new $40 million High Performance Centre was announced. How much can shiny new weights and hot and cold plunge pools improve a 64-10 drubbing like the Eels got at the weekend?
Penrith opened their own high performance centre several years earlier. After their fifth straight loss on Saturday, coach Ivan Cleary said he needed to interview staff and players to get to the root of their problem.
He needed honest answers, he said, and if he got honest answers they would identify the problem and could fix it.
The Broncos opened their own high performance centre last year. Earlier this year coach Anthony Seibold walked me around the facility and warned several times on the trip of the risk of not assuming the centre would be enough to guarantee success, that the Broncos needed to keep working hard.
At the same time a dozen Broncos players, once Seibold was out of sight, acted like mugs in the rehab room. They were boys masquerading as men.
Big shots.
The Broncos don’t have the maturity, as a group, to realise what must be done. The difference is in the understanding.
Not like the Roosters, where Trent Robinson has fought hard to overturn the Roosters’ “Latte Set” reputation as a result of the Roosters’ high-living lifestyles in Sydney’s rich eastern suburbs.
Only once this season have the Roosters started the game with their full-strength spine, the season opener they lost against Souths.
On Sunday they lost captain Boyd Cordner, Daniel Tupou and temporarily Latrell Mitchell — three-quarters of their left side — but still found a way to grind a win against fourth-placed Canberra.
The Raiders are currently transitioning from America’s Cup to whitewater rafting on the back of a reworked defence and mature attitudes.
Their disrupted flights from Canberra to Brisbane, via Melbourne and as long as 14 hours, would have been enough for some teams to write off their preparation and complain about it all the way through to their post-match to explain their defeat.
But the Raiders refused and found their fight, even after losing Jordan Rapana on their weakened right side.
The three best teams in the NRL are Roosters, South Sydney and Melbourne and all are whitewater rafting. Look at how Melbourne fixed the problems revealed in the Cronulla loss in the lead-up to their clash with Parramatta.
Elsewhere, one of Manly’s difficulties in search for a coach to replace Trent Barrett was trying to sell their poor facilities. The Sea Eagles are a long way from America’s Cup and some coaches did not like it.
In came Des Hasler, who thrives in white water. Hasler has always been about getting the job done with what you have got.
The Eels can let people believe contract negotiations are affecting their season, the Panthers can point to off-season troubles and a new coach or the recently departed Phil Gould, the Broncos can let everybody believe the problem is the new coach, not them, as they act like big men.
The solution to their problems is honesty.
Until teams identify squarely where they sit and why, they will never find the white water.
Originally published as If NRL clubs want success, they must first be honest about their failings
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