NRL 2021: Andrew Abdo too soft on ‘white powder’ punishments | Paul Kent
The NRL needs to realise that the strongest way to discipline players is by enforcing punishments that can directly impac results, writes PAUL KENT.
NRL
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If Andrew Abdo bothers to take a look at the path he treads he will see the light, free-stepping footprints of his predecessor Todd Greenberg.
Greenberg was as fluid as they come as a leader, which some admired.
We all know how it ended, though.
Abdo has led the NRL admirably through these past couple of Covid years but Tuesday’s punishments of several players, for matters that might interest police, show that when the NRL finally emerges from the weight of Covid there is still a long way to go.
The street corner tip even before the announcement was that the NRL’s chief executive did not want to punish Melbourne fans by suspending some of the Storm’s better players because, he reasoned, the Storm fans have endured so much already and they deserved to see their stars play.
This was the same frightening logic Greenberg used to lightly punish Parramatta by stripping the Eels of just 12-points for blatantly systematically cheating the salary cap in 2016.
It allowed Parramatta the chance to win the premiership in the very same season they had cheated for advantage — a stain that would never have been overcome — and somehow the outrageousness of that was irrelevant to the then boss.
He thought he was being fair to Parramatta fans.
The tip was that a similarly bizarre rationale was being considered and that is what happened.
Under the NRL’s strange logic, the Warriors might have a right to ask for a please explain.
Among the Integrity Unit sanctions announced, Abdo confirmed that Reece Walsh, the 19-year-old Warriors rookie, was fined $5000 and suspended two games.
Walsh was arrested on the Gold Coast for failing to move on after being ordered to by police and, when later searched at the police station, he was found to have a small bag which he immediately admitted was cocaine.
The following day Reece apologised to Warriors supporters in a Zoom press conference.
Several days later video emerged of Melbourne’s Cameron Munster, Brandon Smith and Chris Lewis in a room with Smith filmed cutting up a white powder on a table in a room full of strangers.
Munster is seen in another video dancing with a bag of white powder in his hand.
The Storm players told the Integrity Unit they have no idea what the powder was. The Integrity Unit, bless them, accepted this.
Their penalty was a one-game suspension — half Walsh received — as well as fines linked to the size of their contracts and an order to undergo an education program.
It took the Storm to finally show Abdo what strong leadership looks like.
On top of the NRL’s sanctions the Storm fined Munster $100,000 (suspended), banned him from drinking for 12 months and have ordered him to rehab, where he starts Wednesday.
The differences in Munster’s treatment was less about finding a punishment publicly acceptable, according to the standards of each office, as it was about trying to drive genuine change.
The Storm know what needs to be done.
They realise Munster is at a vulnerable stage of his career. They realise that unless drastic change happens Munster could be at risk of going the way of so many others who have partied their way out of professional sport.
So the Storm found a punishment to effect change — importantly without adding to the games Munster will miss.
The NRL uncorked one to give the appearance of it.
It shows that what matters in the game as player behaviour becomes an annual event.
The NRL needs a complete overhaul of its disciplinary system to bring it in line with professional standards.
The only punishments that clubs fully respect are those that affect their chances of winning.
The effect is that it will more quickly — and more effectively — force clubs to address their wayward players.
Until the game realises that the strongest way to enforce discipline is by enforcing punishments that can directly impact the team results there will always be a lag between current standards and community commentary.
Instead, the NRL does the exact opposite.
The clubs, headed by their coaches, are best placed to drive the change the NRL wants but are slow for very good reasons.
But until the game enforces a punishment that directly impacts the coach, and the win column, there will always be a lag between expectation and result.
Coaches have always acted out of self interest.
Long before the invention of the Integrity Unit a player urinated under a table at a well-known drinking establishment and security guards swiftly escorted him out.
As whispers began to spread and the League became aware, the coach, known for his discipline, knew immediately what he had to do.
He denied the incident because he needed the player in the side, and then he contacted the establishment in question to see that the security vision was immediately scrubbed.
He knew what the Storm players can now testify to; if it was not on camera, it did not happen.
CLEARY’S SUCCESS EXPOSES MAGUIRE’S GLARING WEAKNESS
The bitterness from Wests Tigers fans towards Ivan Cleary must soften today.
The fight is over, a winner declared. No standing eight count will be afforded to Tigers fans.
They might have turned their anger towards the coach’s box midway through the season when the Tigers upset Penrith at Leichhardt Oval, no doubt giving Cleary all kinds of helpful advice, but the dignified response from here on is a nod in his direction for a well done and then silence.
Tigers fans do not like what Cleary did when he walked out on his contract to go back to Penrith but it paid handsome dividends on Sunday night.
More than that, we all got a chance afterwards to see what it was truly all about.
The softening of heart should start with that moment when the father found his son after the game and they embraced, no words spoken but the strength of the moment revealed in how tightly they held each other.
A thousand different memories were in that embrace.
Anybody who would want to deny a moment like that has a stone in their chest.
Cleary returned to Penrith because he wanted to coach his son.
The upheaval and anger towards Cleary after his walkout on the Tigers was highly emotional.
Even Cleary will admit it was not one of the finer moments in his life but the pull to coach Nathan was compelling, the circumstances were unkind, and there was simply no kind way for it to play out if it was going to happen.
The premiership is another chapter in the prickled links between Cleary and the Tigers.
So, almost on cue, the Tigers quietly released a statement on Monday saying the club and assistant coach Shane Millard had agreed to part company, effectively immediately.
Millard follows the other assistant coach, Wayne Collins, out the door.
The Tigers are now in the market for new assistant coaches and the decision will shape Michael Maguire’s career.
Maguire has one season left on his contract and only improvement in the Tigers next season will save his job at Wests.
It is not understating it, though, to say the decision will likely shape Maguire’s entire coaching future.
A failed season will make it almost impossible for him to find another job.
So a large part of Maguire’s planning now must be to find assistants talented enough to help him succeed next season, which goes against recent instinct.
Maguire was burned at South Sydney when he felt undermined by Anthony Seibold, a talented assistant coach with firm head coaching ambitions.
Maguire got sacked and Seibold slipped quickly into the head coaching role, a transition so smooth Maguire remains convinced there was trickery afoot.
Several times Siebold has heatedly denied undermining Maguire but, regardless of where the truth lies, Maguire felt scorched.
So when he got the Tigers job he vowed never again, and hired assistants unlikely to replace him as the head coach.
Collins coached with him at Souths and Millard was a well-travelled journeyman, but still green as a coach.
When you celebrate getting engaged with a lapdance from your soon-to-be husbandhttps://t.co/l3ZshWDzabpic.twitter.com/GfdnAqn4Jo
— Telegraph Sport (@telegraph_sport) October 4, 2021
This lack of depth was one of the problems pointed out to Maguire during his recent review, which he narrowly survived, and which has resulted in these recent decisions.
The only way forward for Maguire now is to resist his current fears and hire assistant coaches who are potential head coaches at other NRL clubs. Maybe even some who have already done the job, like Shane Flanagan and Neil Henry.
The upside is far more positive heading down this road.
Back before he began remodelling the Brisbane Broncos Ben Ikin would sit in the offices at Fox Sports and occasionally pop his head up from some latest business book he was reading with some unsporting like wisdom.
One business principle particularly struck him.
A-graders hire A-graders, he said, and B-graders hire C-graders.
It was a simple principle we watched for years after that. Who was getting a job and who they were hiring.
It was there in clubs appointing chief executives, in chief executives appointing coaches, in coaches hiring assistants.
The appointments said as much about the men doing the hiring as those that were hired, or the joint they were in, and were a pretty good indicator of what their immediate future would look like.
The best coaches in the game are all developing future head coaches under them, A-graders hiring A-graders.
Craig Fitzgibbon has just left Trent Robinson at the Roosters to take the Cronulla job. Cleary’s assistant, Cameron Ciraldo, is the man tipped to take the next available job.
Ciraldo’s former offsider Trent Barrett is now coaching Canterbury.
The natural conclusion from this philosophy is that intelligent people inspire ideas out of each other that could not be obtained by hiring people whose primary role is not to challenge the head coach.
Nobody ever got dumber by the sharing of good ideas.
Originally published as NRL 2021: Andrew Abdo too soft on ‘white powder’ punishments | Paul Kent
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