State of Origin 2016: Laurie Daley needs to get back to basics and coach the way he played

LAURIE Daley needs to ditch the distractions and prima donnas and coach the Blues the same way he used to play for them writes REBECCA WILSON.

Daley needs to coach the way he played.

IF only Laurie Daley coached football the way he played it.

Starring in that sublimely good Canberra Raiders team of the 80s and 90s, Daley played on pure instinct, scored from anywhere on the field and always paid tribute to his team mates when they performed a bit of magic.

He was the good cop.
Ricky Stuart was the bad cop, grumpy, pushing the referee to breaking point, always looking for a way that skirted the rules.

Together they were unbelievably good, instinct players who dragged the team with them to serious greatness.

It was inevitable that the pair of them would go onto mentoring roles and probably even more so that Laurie Daley, the man who not a soul in the universe doesn’t like, would end up with the prize of coaching the Blues.

Daley was one of the Blues greatest ever players.

Ricky arrived there first back in 2005 but Laurie has made the role his in a much more difficult era. He entered the fray when the Blues were in bad shape and three years later, they sit on the brink of losing 10 of the last 11 series.

Daley’s approach to coaching has become polarising.

He picks and sticks, even when the cattle who are picked are not up for the job. He allows a committee style approach to selections, allowing Bob Fulton, Phil Gould and whoever wants to tell him what they think to have their say.

He stuck to hooker Robbie Farah when his own coach threatened to drop him to reserve grade.

He insisted Dylan Walker be given another chance even when he came off the bench for a nano second and bathed himself in disaster.

He won’t pick Bryce Cartwright even though the rising Penrith star could be the match breaker in Brisbane.

Daley does not have the benefit of hardheads like Thurston, Cronk and Smith to consult when things are crook. He can’t say to the hardest bloke in the game, Cameron Smith, I think we’re buggered here Cam. Any ideas?

Should Daley move on from Paul Gallen?

He has a captain in Paul Gallen who is a loner and a publicity seeker.

For Gal, it’s all about the Gal stats, the Gal hit ups, the Gal tackles and whether Gal might play for another year.

Daley has adopted the Queensland approach of picking and sticking without the benefit of winning. Mal Meninga knew that he had a winning backbone in his side and he only tinkered with it around the edges over the years.

He knew that if he threw the old blokes together just one more time, they would probably outwit and outfox a Blues team picked on ill-founded loyalty.

That is precisely what new coach Kevvie Walters did in Origin One. He stuck to the Meninga formula, knew that scoring tries would be tough but relied on the old blokes to deliver a result.

Daley spent three months deciding on a side and, bless him, has stuck with them for another go in Brisbane even though so much is on the line.

He has advisers telling him Queensland struggled just as badly to score in Sydney so why would they be any different in Brisbane?

Unlike Walters, Daley is crossing t’s and dotting i’s.

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He has given his chief playmakers homework sheets to fill out with assessments of their own performances, the right hand defence, the rights and wrongs of Game One. This is not how Daley played the game.

While Kevvie has three blokes who could coach this side on their ear (Smith, Cronk and Thurston), Daley has very few he can call on for genuine advice and a quiet word.

His assistant coach, Matt Parish, is not the ideal choice for a sidekick role, spending most of his time ordering players about and pretending he is the boss. Parish is not exactly an Origin legend and, like it or not, your reputation does count at times like these.

Where are the Fittlers, the Spudd Carrolls, the Steve Menzies and the Nathan Hindmarshs? Queensland is loaded up with legends. It all harks back to a great era, grand old eras replaced by even better ones.

This is stuff Laurie Daley wishes he had. He is trying to emulate the Queensland way but he has no tradition and no real brilliance in his team on which to build a dynasty. There is no room for Maroon loyalty.

So it could be time for a different approach — picking players purely on form, surrounding them with former NSW greats during camp, selecting young blokes who are hungry and dangerous.

If anyone deserves a break, it’s Daley. He is one of the legends.

He is a great bloke who does have a killer instinct. Now he just needs 20 like him in camp, to ignore the committee and become that Green Machine player who smelt the tryline and just went for it.

Eddie Jones and Glen Ella have masterminded the rise of England.

AUSSIES COACHING POMS FEELS WRONG

I don’t know if it’s just me, but there is something innately wrong with rugby union when a former Wallabies Test legend decides his future is in the England coaching box.

Glen Ella is rubbing salt into just about everyone’s wounds with his foray into the assistant coaching role for England alongside his old Randwick mate, Eddie Jones.

His whooping and jumping around last Saturday night was enough to make a Wallabies fan cry. Ella was one of the Invincibles, part of an unbeaten Wallabies side which was awesome.

Isn’t there a job for him in gold? Or no job at all?

It gets worse, with an Australian performance that was good/brilliant for 20 minutes, and woeful/terrible for 60, and a side whose scrum is as mediocre as it has been (World Cup excepted) for five years.

The experts say we will do better in Melbourne this weekend but if the Wallabies revert to their pre-Michael Cheika habits of box kicks, collapsed scrums and dropped balls, we might all be heading for the hills when the Sydney Test comes around.

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SOCCER DESTRUCTION A BLACK EYE ON THE GAME

The shocking displays from fans during Euro 2016 underline the massive problems that soccer has all around the world with its fans.

In what should be a truly wonderful tournament, fans from Russia, England and other parts of the European Union have made a complete mockery of the idea that a civilised bunch of people might behave themselves in Marseilles.

It doesn’t help that matches are scheduled for 9pm when some idiots have been drinking for 12 hours.

Once again, bad eggs are ruining the game for everyone.

The NRL were right to suspend Wade Graham.

GRAHAM HAD TO GO.

You won’t get much sign of NSW sanity in these pages this week so it needs a Queenslander to say that Wade Graham received exactly what he should have for attacking the head of Johnathan Thurston in the Cowboys-Cronulla clash.

Graham did handle his suspension like a gentleman, perhaps realising himself that there is nowhere to go when you deck a player around the head.

This rubbish about games like Origin and grand finals being treated differently makes a total mockery of a system designed to stop foul play.