Paul Kent: Copycat NRL coaches should learn from golf game changer, Bryson DeChambeau
Given that golf is the rugby league man’s recreation, now that schooners no longer pass the test, hopefully more than a few might be interested in what Bryson DeChambeau can contribute to the game, writes Paul Kent.
Opinion
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Bryson DeChambeau is not your typical rugby league game-changer, but lord knows the game could do with more like him.
Given that golf is the rugby league man’s recreation, now that schooners no longer pass the test, hopefully more than a few might be interested in what DeChambeau can contribute to rugby league.
By way of introduction DeChambeau cruised to victory in last week’s US Open, but it’s how DeChambeau approached that win that should appeal most to the NRL fan. He has turned conventional thinking upside down.
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He was the only golfer in the field at the US Open who had every iron cut to the same length. It made sense to him, as he could keep his swing plane consistent from club to club.
He spent the COVID-19 break consuming six to seven protein shakes a day to add about nine kilograms muscle during quarantine, when most believed extra weight would stiffen his swing.
Instead he averages 295m a drive, more than 10m ahead of the next best, and so when he hit only 23 fairways the entire tournament it did not matter.
DeChambeau, always aggressive, drove long, wedged from the rough, then putted in.
He did anything that was unconventional and then he claimed the Open by six shots.
“I don’t really know what to say because that’s just the complete opposite of what you think a US Open champion does,” Rory McIlroy said of DeChambeau’s victory.
The tip for rugby league, though, might be in what American Xander Schauffele said after the tournament.
“Revolutionise?” asked Schauffele. “Maybe he’s just exposing our game.”
Right now the NRL is stuck in a mire of copycat football, where one coach coughs and they all catch cold.
A solid blueprint was put down some years back where teams played to a point on the field to set up their big play, then had a settler to set up for their next big play.
The problem was teams were so drilled on their structure they kept playing to these “shapes” no matter what the defence showed them.
It created the emergence of empty phrases like “eyes up footy” or players “playing what they see”, when there once was a time when that was all there was.
On Tuesday, the NRL attempted to take the next step to provide more spontaneity in the game by introducing four new rules to be trialled in Thursday’s Brisbane-North Queensland game and Sunday’s Warriors-Manly game.
Among the rules a scrum will be replaced by a handover when the ball is taken into touch, except on a 40-20 or 20-40 kick.
Players will no longer be penalised for being inside the 10m but instead a six again will be called.
The rules are designed to quicken the game and limit the structure for teams to set up mind-numbing block plays and other plays stolen from the handbook of a previous head coach.
Fast thinking is gone from the game because the basic principles that allow a player to react to what he sees are being coached out of the average footballer.
Under the set-up-for-a-play coaches, teams train slow so they think so and so they must play slow. They artificially slow the game with settler plays.
It has caused an influx of cookie-cutter coaches, each preaching from playbooks that simply migrated from their place of previous employment. They implement the same structure, with the same plays … then hope for something different.
Monkey see, monkey do.
Former coaches like Tim Sheens and Bob Fulton used to dip into old games to find old ways to exploit what had become modern trends.
A solid recent example came in the 2016 grand final when Cronulla ran an ancient scrum play. Paul Gallen picked up the ball at lock and turned it inside to Ben Barba, playing second-row, to score.
The move was so old it was considered retired and no longer even coached as a part of scrum defence. The Storm learned the hard way.
The new rules being trialled are an attempt to break down this over-reliance on structure that is slow-cooking the game.
There will be an immediate reaction, of course.
But as Bryson DeChambeau showed, it begins with challenging the status quo.
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