Famed talent scout laments falling standards of NRL’s Generation Next as Covid bites hard

Peter V’landys had to find $15 million to fund moving the entire NRL competition to Queensland. But there is another big cost coming, too.

Peter Mulholland, a few weeks back, was standing on the sideline of a St Mary’s footy oval trying to find himself a halfback that just wasn’t there.

An anomaly?

Maybe.

But know that for hours, and through a dozen games, this famed talent scout watched on at the NSW Schoolboys carnival with those eyes that have launched a thousand NRL careers.

“Yet something,” he insists, “was missing”.

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There’s plenty of talent still in the schoolboys but Covid hasn’t helped the playmakers.

Which isn’t to say the schoolboys present couldn’t play.

They could.

Many of them, particularly the power forwards, looking exactly like any other year.

But the playmakers? The fullbacks?

Um, no.

“Which wasn’t just noticed by me, either,” Mulholland insists.

In fact, as morning became afternoon, there emerged a growing sense of concern among other scouts he encountered holding coffees, notepads and iPhones.

“It was the skill sets — that’s what was missing,” the recruitment man continues.

“You’re watching these kids thinking ‘f …, I can’t find a halfback here’. Or I’d have trouble trying to work out what a fullback was doing.

“And this is after these kids missed only one season of elite competition last year.

“One season of SG Ball and Harold Matthews being cancelled.

“So who knows?

There’s a real worry over where the next Nathan Cleary or Jarome Luai will come from.

“Maybe what I saw that day, it was an aberration.

“But I don’t think so.

“I think there’s a problem arrived and the ramifications will be felt for years.”

Quietly, rugby league is being cruelled by the ongoing Covid pandemic.

Loudly, too, of course.

Just ask Peter V’landys. That unshakeable ARL Commission chief charged this week with not only moving an entire competition interstate, but finding that $15 million required to fund it.

Which in the old rugby league vernacular, is a lot of raffled chooks.

But know there is another cost coming, too.

One few people are talking about yet.

What with us all being so busy looking under Paul Vaughan’s bed.

But still, a price is going to be paid.

Because if Mulholland can identify a change in schoolboys after missing just one year of elite competition, what happens now the game across NSW is being shut down again?

It’s hard to know where the next Sam Walker is going to come from.

Not only at grassroots level, or even those Blues junior pathways, but all the way up to a NSW Cup competition where once again hundreds of players are set to be given no more to do each week than rigorous training scrimmages.

Which isn’t a real worry for just uncontracted fellas like Blake Ferguson and Josh Dugan, or fringe players whose time is now, but also those Next Big Things who need Cup footy as much as oxygen if they’re to eventually explode like Reece Walsh and Sam Walker right now.

And, yes, we know there are far bigger community issues at play.

Take Mulholland, whose ongoing cancer battle sees him currently locked down on a property 20km out of Canberra.

Still studying tape, of course.

That, and working through contracts.

Yet all while concerned about how these same young talents he pours over, or guys on the cusp of an NRL career, will be impacted by a Covid black hole which by year’s end may have sidelined them for 18 months.

Which as the Raiders recruitment guru stresses, “the fault of absolutely no one”.

But make no mistake, careers are being ended.

Others, worryingly stalled.

With the latest shutdown not only taking footy from more than 150 NRL squad members, or some 80 NRL development players, but impacting the overall standard of a code so heavily reliant on the next guy stepping up.

Sure, the power players are OK. With some NRL clubs adding 8kg to players during the 2020 NSW Cup shutdown.

Peter Mulholland (second left) is concerned over the skill sets with such little game time.

Yet according to Mulholland, “development is all about intensity of competition”.

In key positions, especially.

“Yet now we’re at a point where these kids, they could conceivably miss almost 18 months of intense competition,” he says

“How do you get that back?

“It’s an issue.

“And one that has to be addressed because there will be ramifications. Not only a drop off in skills, but in the capacity to develop NRL players.”

Which is not so much a problem now, Mulholland reckons, as tomorrow.

“It’s like the farmer during drought,” he warns. “You don’t get out of the s … this year, or even next year.

“Instead, you have to pay a price.”

Still, NRL clubs are doing what they can to limit the damage.

For a start, opposed training sessions are now taking on an intensity rarely seen before. Same as last year, the code also trialled modified nine-a-side games between Cup players at different clubs.

But still, as Mulholland puts it, “you’re trying to make strawberry jam from pig s…”.

“What the NRL has done to keep the game going in Queensland, it’s a masterstroke,” he continues.

The NRL continues on but the same can’t be said for the grassroots levels of the game.

“But the issue now is going to be all those young men left out.

“The guys making up numbers 21 to 30 on your roster. The guys who give a club its depth.

“They’re the ones who are going to have problems.

“In fact, you’ve got players who are right there on the cusp of NRL selection who are now going to miss what could eventually be up to 18 months of development.

“And as a result, mate, they’re never going to make it.”

A similar issue exists for those on NRL Development Contracts.

“Because they’re the kids you had planned for next year,” Mulholland says. “But now given their lack of games, will they be ready? Or the year after?”

None of which anyone is talking about.

Instead, all eyes now shift north where, for all intents and purposes, the show rolls on.

Which is brilliant, undeniably.

Yet every week the NSW Cup is off, the code’s future suffers.

So as for how long clubs expect the game to be down?

“How long is a piece of string?” Mulholland shrugs “And again, nobody’s fault.

“But to develop players, you’ve got to have that consistency of intense competition.

“And again for the second straight year, that’s gone.”

Originally published as Famed talent scout laments falling standards of NRL’s Generation Next as Covid bites hard