Paul Kent: Why Cameron Smith could cost Melbourne Storm Harry Grant
The curtain is coming down on Craig Bellamy’s long coaching career but it’s not enough for him to change his ways, even if it costs the Melbourne Storm, PAUL KENT writes.
Opinion
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The days of a coach inevitably being run out of town, even the best of them, are about to end.
Some always made it look like they were leading a parade but don’t be fooled, behind them was always an angry board or, more often, a bickering change room.
For a long time everybody thought Bennett would be the exception. Wayne Bennett was the first to disprove Jack Gibson’s philosophy, once regarded a truth, that coaches needed to move on after three seasons because their voices grew stale and their message withered among the playing group.
Bennett had 20 great seasons at Brisbane that netted six premierships, which a fair strike rate on anyone’s language, but he returned a second time and now Bennett can’t get so much as get a kind word from the club.
Big Jack changed it for every coach. Before Jack came along teams were picked by committees on Tuesday night and the captain ran all the training sessions and dominated the press afterwards, the team being very much his team.
The coaches, they seemed to be there to make sure the team sheet was filled out correctly and that all the jumpers got washed.
Jack made coaching important.
Yet after five premierships and with a reputation for turning joints around Jack could do little in his three years at Cronulla, his sixth club, the Sharks still very much a club happy to play well but lose in the final minutes and be considered fine sports then to ever fully explore a ruthless edge that might convert them to winners.
So Jack began to lead one of those parades out of town.
Craig Bellamy will leave Melbourne after next season unlike any long-serving coach before him.
Successful and still wanted.
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The Storm don’t want him to go and Bellamy is still to confirm it officially but every conversation he has, where the topic is raised, finds a man less inclined to keep his thoughts to himself and now talking about walking away after 18 seasons.
Bellamy’s trick for remaining competitive right to the last, unlike the other great coaches, might be as simple as an even temperament and avoiding the mind games most coaches employ in a misguided ploy to get the best from their players.
For years Brian Smith liked to leave it until the dressing room, for one example, before telling a player he was being benched.
Such ploys always work short term, never over the long haul.
Smith wanted all his players walking into the sheds believing they would play. The crushing disappointment at the late dropping was so heavy, though, some players subconsciously began preparing themselves for it, even if they ended up playing.
It was no way to prepare for a game.
Some coaches around the league will keep players on the line for most of a season, stringing them along, teasing them with promises of a new contract. This is rugby league’s equivalent to the cheque is in the mail.
The coach will put off meetings, tell his manager he just needs to sign another player first, that they are waiting on a response from another manager about another player so they know how much is left in the cap, that the contract is there and they will get around to signing it soon … but right now he is too busy to meet.
All are lies to keep the player happy, and mostly so the player continues playing well, before he lowers the boom late enough in the season. This way there is no negative impact on the team.
This is commonly when the player discovers there was never a contract, so the damage is minimal.
Ahead of Saturday night’s game against Canberra Bellamy is still waiting for Cameron Smith to decide whether he will play next year, putting no pressure on Smith to make a quick decision even though he knows that each day Smith ponders is a day closer to losing Harry Grant permanently.
Grant is famously on loan from the Storm to Wests Tigers with an equally famous clause in his contract that allows him to leave Melbourne, where he is due to return next season, if Smith elects to play another season.
Some say Grant is ready to step into the Queensland Origin team right now. He currently runs second in Dally M voting. He is also 22, with a good 10 years ahead of him.
The Storm risk losing an Origin-calibre player, who can serve the club for 10 more years, to accommodate Smith. As great as he is, is it worth it for one season?
It would be some surrender.
Bellamy has refused to get involved. All that Smith has done for the club, he says, premierships and glory, gives him the right to decide his future.
Some believe others at the club should be putting a deadline on Smith. That it is responsible roster management.
Bellamy remains unconcerned because even if Grant does not return the Storm will still have Brandon Smith, the New Zealand Test hooker currently playing a utility role in Melbourne, ready to take over permanently.
Some at the club believe Brandon Smith has more upside than Grant. Brandon Smith has also made it clear he wants to play hooker next season. Among other reasons, there is a World Cup and he needs time at dummy-half before the tournament.
Still, some coaches want all the toys in the cot.
The Storm could easily tell Grant that Cameron Smith will move to halfback next season to lure him back even if there is no intention to actually apply Smith at half.
The con has already been set up.
A week ago Bellamy looked at the Sydney Roosters roster and at his five-eighth Cameron Munster hobbling around with a torn medial ligament and it didn’t quite balance out.
He told Cameron Smith he was considering playing him halfback. He thought it was best for the team.
“I knew he didn’t want to do it,” Bellamy said.
Bellamy was not sure himself.
He told Smith they would discuss it the next day and spoke to his assistants in the meantime.
The next morning there was no discussion. He simply told Smith he was playing halfback.
Bellamy, clearly, thought it best to start against the Roosters with Smith at halfback and Brandon Smith at hooker, leaving Ryley Jacks to come off the bench.
The day of the game the Storm broke up into their usual meetings and Smith, who usually plays in the middle, found himself in the unusual position of attending the edges meeting.
He sat there in silence, which concerned Bellamy. Smith is usually like another coach in meetings
“Listen,” Bellamy said after the meeting, “I need you a little bit more invested here.”
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Smith was never comfortable playing halfback. Only he knows why, he never explained, but given he was never known as Lightning Smith most believe he felt vulnerable defending on an edge where pace could isolate him and beat him.
Regardless, he nodded his head and turned in a performance that saw the Storm home in golden point.
Cameron Smith holds the key to not only his own future, short term, but also that of Grant and Brandon Smith.
It would be easy, if Bellamy was so inclined, to indicate Cameron Smith will play halfback next year to entice Grant back to Melbourne, even if there was no intention to play Smith at half.
He would not be the first coach to consider it and certainly will not be the last.
Many would even argue it is the smart play and so the only play available.
Why he won’t is why Bellamy is still coaching at the storm, and still getting the best from his players, 18 seasons later.
He simply has too many honest bones to play such games.
SIMPLY V’BEST
It is an unusual feeling, but a welcoming one, to get in a sledging match with the AFL and have the frontrunning.
As the AFL continues to mismanage its whole COVID-19 crisis, ably supported by a Victorian government that also got things terribly wrong, talk surfaced during the week that Sydney’s ANZ Stadium leads the way to host this year’s AFL grand final.
Collingwood boss Eddie McGuire claimed Sydney hosting the AFL grand final would be ARL Commission chairman Peter V’landys’ “worst nightmare”.
Other AFL greats have reacted strongly, recoiling like they’ve just been asked to smell somebody’s shoes.
V’Landys, far from intimidated, asked why wouldn’t the AFL want to bring the grand final to the best city in the world.
He knows an AFL grand final in Sydney is win-win.
If it succeeds it is a success for Sydney, the city, and how for all the talk of the magic of a grand final at “The G” it now also works in Sydney.
If it fails, it is a success for rugby league, and a lack of appetite for the sport outside of Melbourne, contradicting the AFL’s long held opinion of itself.
V’Landys knew just what buttons to push.
It was perfect.
Originally published as Paul Kent: Why Cameron Smith could cost Melbourne Storm Harry Grant