Trainer ban: The NRL is learning a little but there is a lot more to do

If the NRL truly understood how much rugby league fans hated the incessant intrusion of blue-shirted trainers on to the playing field they would do more, writes Paul Kent.

Broncos trainer Allan Langer during the Sydney Roosters v Brisbane Broncos Qualifying Final at Allianz Stadium, Sydney. Picture: Brett Costello

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The decision to limit blue-shirt trainers on the field shows the NRL is finally listening to the fans – and finally getting a little much needed footy sense in their thinking.

There wasn’t a blue shirt to be seen during the Perth Nines tournament in a sign of things to come in — of sorts — in the 13-man game.

“The fans hate it,” NRL head of football, Graham Annesley, said, telling us what we all knew already, and have for years.

Yet if the NRL understands the fans hate it, why allow it at all?

Clubs are already planning on how to exploit the partial ban on trainers entering the field of play. Picture: Brett Costello

Allowing three “tactical” entries to the field, they are allowed on for injury stoppages, just alleviates the irritation without actually stopping it. Besides, clubs are already working on ways to exploit it.

This is one of many small grievances fans have with the way the game is being administered at the moment.

The NRL’s problem is there is no-one in head office, besides Annesley, who has been around long enough to see how clubs created some of the problems in the game, and why they should be dealt with.

It’s time to get Cronulla's Briton Nikora runs into a trainer as he makes a break during the Wests Tigers v Cronulla Sharks NRL match at Leichhardt Oval, Sydney. Picture: Brett Costello

The environment for blue shirts to get unrestricted access to the field and slowly transform medical aid into full-blown coaching, for example, began with fears “someone will die in this heat” after Easts’ Danny Shepherd was hospitalised for heat stroke in the early 1990s and actually did almost die.

Clubs quickly exploited the new access to have trainers deliver messages before they began full-blown coaching, all under the pretence of delivering water to dehydrated players.

If marathon runners can get through 42km with a 180-beat heartrate in the heat of an Olympic summer then surely the modern NRL player can make it until halftime.