Paul Kent: There’s a severe lack of footy IQ at NRL HQ, and it’s the root of the game’s issues
THE great problem the NRL has is that it doesn’t know how to fix its own mess, and it starts with a lack of knowledge about rugby league coming from those within the game, writes PAUL KENT.
NRL
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EARLIER this year I am at the lavish farewell dinner John Grant is throwing for himself when, from across the room, my name gets called out with an insult attached.
It was a lovely little noun and it comes from one of the ARL commissioners, making their way forward.
The commissioner is upset at my criticism of them, particularly that I keep saying they know nothing about the game.
An explanation is given, if not agreed with, and the conversation quickly turns civil.
Several others commissioners join the conversation and, towards the end, a question comes from out of the blue.
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“So tell me this,” one says. “What’s the one question you want us to answer?”
The truth is slowly beginning to emerge out this game. The mismanagement at the NRL has left public confidence in the game at an all-time low.
The problem over the weekend, where decisions were made and seasons were ended on basic officiating errors, is not the referees.
They are merely symptom of the years of poor leadership at League Central.
The great problem is the NRL has no idea how to fix its own mess.
Officiating, expansion, grassroots, international development, crowds and stadiums are all crucial problem areas for the game and in not one is there clear strategic plan on how the game should proceed.
Every idea is a good idea in this game. But every idea comes in isolation.
A Test in Denver? Beautiful, we have to care about the international game.
Player welfare? Wonderful, we can’t have the players being overtaxed.
Both work in isolation. Neither work together.
NRL boss Todd Greenberg ordered a crackdown on the play-the-ball and deliberate offside before the season and stood boldly on that platform.
“If people want to come out over this weekend and start ripping into the referees, I’ve got some advice for them: they better start ripping into me first because all the referees are doing is following instruction,” Greenberg said in March.
Greenberg is endemic of the game’s problems. The leader.
He attacked the constant and deliberate exploitation of the rules by coaches by ordering the crackdown — but got no buy-in from the coaches.
So they fought him the whole way.
So in June the message changed.
“I wouldn’t say we’re going to soften, we’re absolutely on the right path,” he said.
“There has been a tendency for referees to continue to nitpick, so we have to find the balance.”
Then his chairman, Peter Beattie, weighed in with a tweet that was completely nonsensical.
“We don’t want referees looking for things to penalise — we want them to referee what is in front of them.”
How do you do one without the other?
It underlines the crucial lack of footy IQ at headquarters.
Despite the warnings the referees did soften, to the point coaches had to rethink how they played — Paul McGregor would even hire former referee Luke Phillips to help navigate the new direction — after round 11.
Last week, now in July, it changed again.
“We got an email at the start of the week, they were going to look at the crowding of the play-the-ball and it’s taking too long for guys to get off tackles,” Warriors coach Steve Kearney said Sunday.
“I’m watching tonight and I’m thinking, well, I don’t know if they sent themselves that email.”
But simply attacking the referees, though, is to get lost in this argument.
The NRL’s problem is not the refereeing.
The NRL’s problem is the NRL. Referees are part of it. The corruption of the rules by coaches, this need for “interpretation” of the rules, even as they exploit them and bend them, is another.
A common theme runs through every problem the game faces — and it has never faced more — and yet the Commission and League Central can’t work it out.
The game does not know what it wants to look like.
What are we working towards?
What does the rep season look like? How many teams and in what cities is the plan?
What’s the plan for junior football?
John Grant came in as the businessman we were led to believe the game needed.
He left six years later having overseen the spending of $1 billion and yet he left the game with no assets, no money and no investment strategy.
Raiders coach Ricky Stuart suggested getting the finest rugby league brains in the game together to sort out the game’s problems.
What’s the point if they don’t know what they have to work towards?
It is the ARL Commission’s job to give the game direction.
They have failed.
It is Greenberg’s job to deliver it.
He has failed.
When that question is put to me by the commissioner there are so many I want answered it is hard to find just one.
“Okay,” I say, “Tell me what the game looks like in 20 years, tell me what it looks like in 50 years, and tell what your plan is to get it there?”
There was a slight pause.
“That’s a pretty good question.”
It is frightening they have not considered it.
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Originally published as Paul Kent: There’s a severe lack of footy IQ at NRL HQ, and it’s the root of the game’s issues
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