Paul Kent: Paul Green surprises North Queensland Cowboys by walking away
Ultimatums are for the timid or the weak. A ploy to sack the coach when the board does not have the strength to make the decision itself. PAUL KENT explains why the Broncos could be headed for a world of trouble.
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Paul Green understood accountability a long time before Cowboys chairman Lewis Ramsay met with him last week.
They spoke about North Queensland’s lack of results and whether his voice cut through the dressing room like it once had, among many things they spoke about, and Ramsay told Green the board had decided to have a look in the market for a new coach.
It was no guarantee he would be sacked at the end of this season but, surely, Ramsay figured, Green understood.
Green then shocked the Cowboys’ boss. He asked Ramsay to give him the weekend against Penrith and then he would leave.
There’s a feeling now that Green, with all this uncertainty in coaches around the game, wanted to get into the market as quickly as possible.
Either way the decision, now made, worked for both sides.
It says something about the current state of rugby league that the coach with the safest job in Queensland is Gold Coast coach Justin Holbrook.
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It says something more that when another coach was terminated on Monday, the third for the season already, it wasn’t Anthony Seibold or even Paul McGregor.
It was the perfect end to a madcap weekend where coaching exists, it seems, to remind the mighty of their fallibility. Every coach gets sacked eventually.
Dean Pay was let go at Canterbury last week and his team went out against St George Illawarra and had the game won until they didn’t. The Bulldogs are becoming what North Sydney used to be to the competition, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
The Broncos went down 48-0 to Wests Tigers, perhaps the worst performance in Broncos history, and the club responded by giving Seibold an ultimatum, later watered down by chairman Karl Morris, that he must win at least five of his remaining 10 games or face being sacked.
Five wins still will not be enough to get the Broncos into the finals, so what it achieves is anybody’s guess.
What was revealed was the inadequacy of the Broncos’ management.
Ultimatums are for the timid or the weak. A ploy to sack the coach when the board does not have the strength to make the decision itself.
If Seibold does not get the five wins then he goes and the club reminds everybody it gave him every opportunity.
If he does get the wins they claim it as a victory.
The problem with the Broncos’ ultimatum to Seibold is it shows the board is not aligned with the thinking of their coach.
Ever since the Broncos began failing Seibold has been selling the big picture. It was a vision only he could see but, he kept indicating, once he has had the full five years of his contract to “rebuild” the Broncos, they would have success.
What changes does he make now, on a 10-game time limit?
Many of Seibold’s long-term strategies will now have to be sacrificed for short-term gain. The impact on those long-term plans could be fatal.
The Cowboys taught the Broncos a lesson on Monday with the handling of Green’s exit.
Accountability is often a lost art in the modern world, among not only coaches but boards as well.
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Green and the Cowboys made a strong statement.
Most of us can still remember the 2014 preliminary final, when the Roosters led 30-0 and the Cowboys came back to make it 30-all, one of the great comebacks, then in extra time had a try disallowed when Robert Lui got the briefest of touches on the ball to knock on earlier in the play.
The players were devastated in the dressing room. There is no silence like a shattered dressing room.
Eventually one of the players complained about the refereeing. Three years in a row they’d been robbed. There was a forward pass, a seventh tackle try, you name it the Cowboys found a way to lose.
“Eyes up everyone,” Green said. The players lifted their heads.
“For f… sake, can we stop blaming referees,” he said. “When are we going to take responsibility?
“We were down 30-nil.
“Go back to Townsville and take responsibility for it.
“Don’t take the pats on the back, don’t listen to people tell you it was the referees.
“Tell people you let them down. Take accountability for it.”
It was the catalyst for the best off-season they had had in years, one filled with hard work and want.
That following year the Cowboys beat the Broncos in the 83rd minute to win the premiership.
You could look it up.
Originally published as Paul Kent: Paul Green surprises North Queensland Cowboys by walking away