Paul Kent column: Cameron Smith keeps NSW selectors guessing even in retirement
IT happened almost as a metaphor for all that has happened the previous dozen years. The party was about to begin and they did not even know. Even in retirement Cameron Smith has tormented NSW selectors, writes Paul Kent.
Blues
Don't miss out on the headlines from Blues. Followed categories will be added to My News.
IT happened almost as a metaphor for all that has happened the previous dozen years. The party was about to begin and they did not even know.
Tuesday morning NSW coach Brad Fittler, with his two advisers Danny Buderus and Greg Alexander, flew to Melbourne with NSW Rugby League chief executive Dave Trodden.
They flew to see Melbourne coach Craig Bellamy and talk a little Origin.
“Sure,” said Bellamy. “Come on down.”
LATE MAIL: Round 11 team news
CAP PAIN: Inside Canterbury’s salary cap hell
CONFIDENTIAL: Why Maloney’s Origin spot’s in danger
In Melbourne they headed to the Storm training and stood on the sideline as the players began to run through their warm-up drills.
Fittler is in the Hall of Fame and Buderus and Alexander just got nominated. They saw nothing any different in front of them from what they have seen in a lifetime of rugby league.
Then it began.
Fittler and Alexander looked over and saw Queensland coach Kevin Walters walking onto the field in his Queensland number ones. Coat and tie.
“What are you doing here?” they said.
Forget that. Walters looked at the NSW Blues brains trust on what he knew was a very important day and said, “What are you doing here?”
Walters might have been more confused than they were.
The players got into their training when Cameron Smith look to the sideline with sudden alarm.
What were the Blues doing here?
Smith urgently called his players into a tight group.
The talk went on and on and on and, between the four Blues on the sideline, they each volunteered aloud what Smith must be saying to them.
“Maybe he’s talking about his suspension,” Fittler said.
It seemed plausible.
Smith won’t play Manly on Saturday night after taking the discount for taking an early guilty plea for a dangerous contact tackle on Gold Coast’s Kevin Proctor last round.
Maybe it was the suspension. Or maybe it was tactics, who knew.
Being Melbourne and all, it began to rain and the Blues coaches skipped off to a cafe across the road to stay dry. Bellamy caught up with them in the cafe, telling them he won’t be long.
“I’ve just got to go and do a press conference,” he told Fittler.
He held a small smile that caught their attention.
“You boys don’t know, do you?” Bellamy said.
“Know what?”
“I can’t say anything at the moment.”
By now Fittler, Buderus and Alexander were confused. There was Walters, in his suit, and Bellamy off to do a press conference he could not even talk about, and Smith who is not even playing calling his teammates into a huddle and talking to them for an unusually long time.
The rain picked up and they sat in the cafe, caught in their own Twilight Zone, talking and waiting for Bellamy.
As Bellamy walked back in Trodden’s phone rang.
He smiled. “I know what Craig was doing.”
And so Brad Fittler, who lives a charmed life, got another small gift from the rugby league gods.
No Smith, to go with no Cooper Cronk and no Johnathan Thurston.
Forget the talk, like that which happened on Channel 9 between Fittler and Phil Gould after the Penrith-Wests Tigers game Thursday night, that Smith’s retirement makes it tougher for NSW.
The greatness of Smith, who retired from representative football in the 30 minutes or so that the Blues sat there wondering, is absolute.
And the irony of it all is that it likely will never be fully appreciated.
Not because few are willing why Smith is so good. But because few are capable of explaining.
Influence can only be acknowledged. There is no tangible way to measure it.
The greatness of Smith is in the words coaches search to find when identifying why he is so good.
Only then do you begin to get an idea of the puzzle.
Fittler had a plan for Smith right up until Tuesday, when he sat in the cafe and Trodden told him Smith was retiring immediately and Bellamy sat down and said it was a shock to him like it was to all of them.
Like he had for the past dozen years, Smith had them confused.
The best indication of Smith’s rare talent came some years ago when he was again dominating headlines and somebody was on the phone to an NRL coach and, almost as an aside, they asked why Smith was so good.
What did he see that fans on the sideline and through their televisions did not see? It’s hardly like anybody sees Smith run a 90 metres for a try or shake off six defenders.
The coach paused.
The same confusion was going through his head as went through most coaches.
Every player has habits, he began. Pet plays, certain ploys they prefer. The countless hours of video coaches do every week and over a long season crystallises the habits in clear terms and gives coaches a blueprint to attack.
You can identify Smith’s and construct a game plan to shut him down, the coach said, but such is Smith’s intelligence he quickly recognises how the defence is nullifying him and he changes on the run.
He controls tempo with his kicking game. He controls the speed of the ruck both in attack and defence.
It has been the history of his torment of NSW. Just when they think they know what he is doing, he changes. Like Tuesday.
It stands that the greatest player in the game has gifts above the ordinary, and more of them at that.
When Luke Lewis played his first game with Smith, for Australia, he sat on a short side when the Kangaroos got the ball and Smith told him to stay there, he was coming back to him for tackle three.
Lewis looked up and saw too many defenders in front of him. The advantage was the open side.
Smith picked up the ball and played out of dummy-half once, then twice, and in those two plays Lewis watched him pull the defenders from the short side in front of him to the open.
He then came back with a short ball to Lewis who had nobody but a halfback defending on his tryline in front of him.
Beautiful.
“It’s his vision,” another coach said.
Smith returns next week and will play the other giant of his generation, Thurston.
The Cowboys are struggling and must win at least 10 of their final 14 games, and probably 11, to be even a chance of making the finals.
It is unlikely, and creates a postcard moment for the game next Friday.
It will most probably be the last time they stand together, two giants, on the same field.
VALE TROY WATERS
THERE are many sadnesses in Troy Waters’ life, who died on Friday.
Of all the fighters with all the world titles Australia has provided in the past 30 years, a cash-in on the alphabet soup nature of the sport nowadays, Waters still remains in the top half-dozen fighters Australia produced.
Yet he never won a world title, a stain he did not deserve.
The absence of a belt had nothing to do with a lack of tools but more that he was mismanaged at a time when he need astute management most.
His father Ces, an evil man, had Waters spar 30 rounds the day before his first world title fight against Italian Gianfranco Rossi.
Madness.
Terry Norris was regarded as the coming Sugar Ray Leonard when Troy fought him in 1993.
Norris dropped Troy in the first round and Troy dropped Norris in the second. Cuts around Troy’s eyes stopped it in the third.
There were softer titles to chase but Troy always took the tough route. Behind a classic defence and with a body shot that creased opponents, what he craved was legitimacy.
Maybe it was a justification he sought given his unconventional upbringing.
There was gentleness inside Troy, one all the more remarkable given the brutal upbringing crazy Ces gave him and brothers Dean and Guy and their sister Michelle.
It was a terrible, tragic start to life, but Troy somehow overcame it with no hang-ups and no victim mentality.
He died yesterday of acute myeloid leukaemia, just 53, leaving behind wife Michelle and children Nate, 17, and Shontae, 13.
We were friends and he often spoke of how proud he was of his family. He loved that they were completely normal, and very loving.
Originally published as Paul Kent column: Cameron Smith keeps NSW selectors guessing even in retirement
Storm coach puts end date on career
Melbourne Storm coach Craig Bellamy has opened up on his future and putting a potential finishing date on his legendary career.
Search delayed: Inside the 72 hours that left Blues coachless
Less than 72 hours after outlining his plan to defend the State of Origin shield in 2025, Michael Maguire signed a three-year deal with the Broncos. DAVID RICCIO reveals when the Blues will begin scouting for Maguire’s replacement.