Paul Kent: Broncos could learn from Roosters about what success looks like
The Broncos and Anthony Seibold could learn a thing or two from the Roosters about how to treat their senior players if they want to be successful again, writes Paul Kent.
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Jake Friend has never been more happier he was never Andrew McCullough than this past month.
Friend was offered a lifetime deal at the Roosters this week. Such was his sacrifice to the club the Roosters wanted to respect how he leaves the game.
So chairman Nick Politis said Friend will be offered a year-by-year contract for year after year until Friend eventually retires.
McCullough was in the Brisbane system even longer than Friend was at the Roosters.
He got called in last month and told if he wanted to continue playing first grade it would have to be at another club. If he stayed at the Broncos he would be in reserve grade.
McCullough, who was the best of Brisbane, signed with Newcastle before the month was out.
Rosters are difficult to manage in the salary cap era.
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The Roosters realised the problem their offer to Friend could create. Sam Verrills is 21 and the Roosters want him for another decade.
The smart choice under a salary cap would be to let Friend go now and promote Verrills, which would buy at least a couple of years of salary cap relief. But, somewhere in the past few years, the Roosters moved toward a deeper understanding of their club.
How you treat your senior players, they realised, goes through the club. What would a 50-gamer juggling contract offers think if Friend, who has played for the Roosters the way he has, for as long as he has, was tossed to the scrap heap the moment a younger, shinier choice came along?
There was only ever one solution for the Roosters.
It is, they believe, the reason why the Roosters players are going so deep at the moment. Playing for each other, digging deeper into their character … and thus elevating the whole club.
Meanwhile the Broncos still can’t understand where they get it wrong. Coach Anthony Seibold is second guessing himself more than ever.
He questions the criticism of club legends, for one, dismissing their contribution to the club by default.
What does that say, to his current players, about how the club operates?
Brisbane’s failings are not all Seibold’s doing.
The Broncos overpaid for the likes of Anthony Milford, Darius Boyd and Jack Bird — all signed under Wayne Bennett — but, as coach, Seibold has been unable to extract even a fraction of their worth like Bennett could.
So, instead, he arms himself with excuses and diversions. Stats to explain their poor performances when the first requirement of the professional athlete, effort, is missing all too frequently from his team.
The Broncos are a fading powerhouse. They play Gold Coast tonight and have no idea why they are fading, and so some believe the last-placed Gold Coast a chance.
The Broncos no longer understand what success looks like. If they did Seibold would be lowering his head and concentrating on the only thing that matters, which is coaching his way out of their problems.
Until then, the Broncos will never recapture what they once were, and what the Roosters are becoming; the team that most players want to be a part of.
Somewhere in Robinson’s library is a tennis manual, written by W. Timothy Gallwey three years before Robinson was born. It is called The Inner Game of Tennis.
Now it is usually considered a good rule to avoid anybody who parts his name to the side but, in W. Timothy Gallwey’s book, Robinson found a small jewel.
Coaching is often about reducing complex ideas into simple instruction. As American cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky once said, if you can’t explain something simply then you probably don’t understand it.
Too many coaches in the NRL, you ask them for the time and an hour later they are still telling you how the watch works.
It’s a good example of where coaching has lost its way. And why clubs are fooled and there is this great problem in the game at the moment with coaches like Steve Kearney getting sacked last week and other coaches fighting for their jobs.
A whole culture of ambitious coaches talking “eyes up footy” and “a good carry”, and all those other meaningless buzzwords designed to fool the ignorant and hide their own lack of education, is choking the game.
And if these same men can carry off a power point presentation at the job interview, well, the job is theirs.
There are too few true coaches in the NRL which, at its most basic level, says coaching should be about improving players.
Too many retire from playing and get hired inside a club and work through until they are promoted to an assistant and then wait for a club to give them the head coaching role, all without ever having a final decision rest on their shoulders.
Clubs used to recruit coaches that won reserve grade premierships or under-23s premierships.
Now, they want assistants at strong organisations, hoping to duplicate the success.
Where have the coaches gone?
Fewer and fewer, it seems, are able to marry the theory and the practice.
Gallwey talks about the two selfs.
Self One is the conscious self. This is the part of the footballer that talks to himself. The part that reinforces positive messages, reminds them of their commitments. Logically thinks through action.
Self Two is subconscious. That is the instinct inside the athlete. Actions repeated so often they are grooved into behaviour.
Once in the arena, Self Two has acted before Self One has even realised.
This is where the Roosters are at the moment.
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Robinson, clear on how his team should play, pushes them so hard during the week that by game day he prefers to be more quiet, leaving space for their subconscious to take over.
They take that instinct into their performance.
The Broncos, the players speak most often about feeling confused. They are trying to think their way through their game and failing terribly.
This might be the difference between the true coach and the power point coach.
Too many modern coaches are explaining the watch. Trying to impress their players with their knowledge, often right up until their players get the knock on the dressing room door.
The Broncos were once the greatest franchise in the NRL.
Seibold, now the caretaker, is coaching externally.
He feels every wound in every newspaper article. He professes to be unconcerned, but defends himself incessantly.
He claims to be in control of what is happening at Brisbane, well aware of the bigger picture at stake, but changes direction so often it is hard to see what he is trying to achieve.
So many changes have taken place, so many excuses offered, it is hard to believe anything anymore.
Meanwhile, their actions defy them. And lost in all the theory is the understanding that footballers are people, who are real and vulnerable and proud, and who deserve respect, like Andrew McCullough and like young Sam Walker.
When Walker was up for contract last year of course the Broncos wanted to renegotiate.
Walker, 16, is the son of former Bronco Ben Walker and considered the best teenage halfback in the country.
So last year when it came time to talk about extending his deal the Broncos told him to get in an Uber and come into their office. They told him not to tell his parents.
Why, nobody has ever properly explained. When Sam told Ben, the decision was made.
Within an hour Sam signing with the Roosters their boss Nick Politis called Ben and thanked him for trusting them with their son.
He said the Roosters will do all they can to make Sam not just a better player but to improve him as a person, not just throughout his career but beyond.
It was the difference between a first class operation and a fading one
SHORT SHOT
As Matty Johns pointed out in Friday’s Daily Telegraph the new rules introduced in the NRL seem to have created a competition between the haves and the have-nots.
Credit to the haves.
For too long too many teams were able to compete simply by watching what their opponents were doing and copying it, with frustrating refereeing and a slow game tempo keeping the scores artificially close.
In this version of the NRL, lesser teams were often able to fluke a victory over a more fancied team, often to the frustration of fans who knew what they saw.
The NRL often then leaned on those skewed scores to show how level the competition was and how well the salary cap was working.
It was always bit of a con-job.
The revamped rules has resulted in a truer competition, where form and excellence is rewarded and the best teams are clearly in control of their results.
The game is always good when footy and fitness are the true deciders on a team’s results.