Understanding talent and reward makes or breaks an NRL club’s premiership hopes
THE thing that separates the clubs at the top of the ladder from those propping them up isn’t just identifying talent, it’s knowing when to reward it, writes PAUL KENT.
Opinion
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THE commentators ran deep with praise for Jarryd Hayne on Thursday night. Where has this been, they asked, with a lyrical shine.
More to the point, the question should have been where is he going?
Hayne is clearly on the move.
It has become Parramatta folklore that Hayne’s best seasons more often coincide with a contract negotiation, a teaser that he has finally found a consistency to his flashy talent.
Hayne is on unfamiliar ground this time around.
Ten games remain before Hayne becomes a free agent, uncontracted anywhere.
Parramatta has shown no movement to re-sign him and the noise around the rest of the NRL is silence.
Hayne, close to brilliant against the Dragons, addressed this new uncertainty this week by claiming he enjoys walking through “blind doors”.
Then right on cue he re-woke the rugby league world to this undeniable talent in the close loss to St George Illawarra.
There is no denying Hayne’s talent when he wants to turn it on.
He did it five days after phoning in his game for Fiji where he suffered a shoulder injury so severe, he claimed later, there was the potential for it to end his season.
Brave.
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Meanwhile, in related news, Neil Henry is still out of a job.
Nothing earns a second chance like talent.
Such is the margin for success we forgive over and over to grasp just a small nugget of talent. When Henry couldn’t get Hayne going at Gold Coast the Titans sided with their temperamental talent, only to watch him walk out on them several months later.
Some clubs just keep falling for the irresistible temptation of natural-born talent.
How nervous must Garth Brennan be?
Brennan is paying three-quarters of a million dollars a year for Bryce Cartwright and just 15 rounds into taking over his four-year $3 million contract Brennan confirmed that Cartwright is free to look elsewhere.
Cartwright hasn’t been around for all of those 15 games, mind you, and won’t be around when the Titans play Wests Tigers at Leichhardt Oval.
From a job security point of view Brennan is fortunate he holds greater sway at the Gold Coast than Cartwright, something Henry could not say.
Cartwright is quietly being sold to Manly on the premise of playing under his uncle John, the former Titans coach now assistant to Trent Barrett.
Uncle John can get Bryce going, goes the sell.
But hang on, isn’t that why Cartwright was supposed to succeed under Brennan?
Brennan in February: “If you speak to Gus [Panthers general manager Phil Gould] I think he’ll make comment that I am probably the only coach that’s going to get the best out of Bryce because of our relationship together.”
Barrett is said to be apprehensive about the signing.
Understandably.
What got left unsaid is that Brennan got seduced by talent.
Talent captivates. It fools us.
Talent without hard work is a cliche. Every coach with an ambition will have a book somewhere in his office that says something similar.
Yet they continue to fall for it, certain they have the ability to be the difference no one else could make.
The confident coaches will take hard work before talent every day.
Canterbury went some way toward handling that this week by appointing Gareth Holmes as general manager of football.
The Bulldogs are in a terrible mess.
Aaron Woods was released during the week, 15 rounds into his four-year deal, Moses Mbye left a fortnight ago and Kieran Foran checked himself into hospital this week, his final concession the season was a bust.
The only way Canterbury’s problems can be explained is that their eyes grew too big for their bellies. The Dogs got greedy and failed to handle the problems they created by signing players on bloated contracts.
They will pay for it for seasons to come.
Holmes, if he does the job he is employed to do, will go a long way to helping rebuild Canterbury.
Coaches need help to avoid the seduction of talent. The mentality to want it all, right now.
It was Phil Gould’s job to offload Cartwright from Penrith, a place where his surname had a tinge of royalty, not coach Anthony Griffin.
Grandfather Marv Cartwright helped form the Panthers. Uncle John remains one of their club greats.
Bryce’s talent was identified from a very early on, so much that he was contracted in the club’s 25-man squad years before he was ready to play NRL football, only to prevent other clubs signing him away from Penrith.
Reward before effort.
He was drafted into the NSW’s emerging Blues squad while he was still learning to tackle.
Yet Gould, the Panthers’ general manager of football, overlooked the undeniable talent to focus on the club’s general welfare.
Coaches will always err on the side of talent. It is the one temptation they cannot resist. Premierships cannot be won by teams without talent.
Coaches only ever sign two- or sometimes three-year contracts and know it is vital to be successful in that time, otherwise there is no follow-up contract.
So they plan for the duration of their contract and, although it is not admitted, will risk the club’s long-term welfare for its short-term success.
A general manager is there to oversee the club’s recruitment and retention and plan beyond the coach’s contract.
So Gould looked at Cartwright and moved him on. The money he released helped sign Reagan Campbell-Gillard to a six-year extension this week.
Along with Penrith, St George-Illawarra has led the way into what should be rugby league’s new world by appointing Ian Millward as the general manager of football.
With input from head coach Paul McGregor, Millward has rebuilt the Dragons’ roster with quiet purpose.
Wests Tigers appointed Kelly Egan to work with Ivan Cleary. Another success.
Then we look down the table.
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Manly. No one since Bob Fulton was unceremoniously pushed out the door, their rebuild now stagnant.
Brad Arthur asked for a football manager, former staffer Phil Moss, but was denied the salary by administrator Max Donnelly. The Eels are playing catch-up, with several mid-season announcements, but their first significant move might be to let Hayne go.
Thankfully the Dogs have finally woken up.
Meanwhile, in unrelated news, Neil Henry still remains without a job.
*****
PETER Beattie … good grief.
With each fresh tweet the Australian Rugby League Commissioner reveals himself a twit. His appointment is an embarrassment to the game.
He did not know Cronulla played out of the Shire, then concocted some barely plausible explanation for it. Barcelona is now in Newcastle, apparently, and on it goes.
His latest came Monday.
Beattie picked up the thread on Twitter — a day after ratings revealed the game was down 12 per cent on Origin I, making it the lowest-rating Origin game since the Game III dead rubber in 2010 — when some fans called for a Sunday afternoon kick-off.
“The fans view is clear; Sunday afternoon is overwhelmingly preferred,” Beattie tweeted. “NRL would therefore look favourably at 4pm on a Sunday. A good family friendly time, kids can watch and BBQs before the game. Over to ch 9 now.”
NRL would look favourably at a family-friendly 4 pm kick off on Sunday afternoon for the second Origin game. https://t.co/TUdzmSqmZE
— Peter Beattie (@SmartState1) June 25, 2018
That the game’s most senior figure does not have a basic clue about the realities of prime time TV and its value in the commercial agreement between Nine and the NRL goes beyond embarrassing.
Origin would not be worth near what the NRL currently receives in broadcast revenue if Nine was unable to televise in prime time.
Secondly, Beattie is advocating a timeslot when many of the game’s strongest followers — the grassroots players — are actually playing their own A-grade and B-grade games around the country, something he clearly has no experience of.
One word for it. Embarrassing.
Originally published as Understanding talent and reward makes or breaks an NRL club’s premiership hopes
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