Melbourne tossed a lot of their structure away and it’s paying off

IT is just like Melbourne that, just when everybody begins catching up, they go and change the way they play and kick again, writes Paul Kent.

Melbourne Storm have changed their style of play

IT is just like Melbourne that, just when everybody begins catching up, they go and change the way they play and kick again.

All this began late last year when Craig Bellamy was talking to Matthew Johns about Blake Green going to Manly and how Cameron Munster will come in for him.

It was a mostly successful season for the Storm. Backed by the best defence in the NRL along with the best completion rate with the ball, which ranked them only sixth in points admittedly, they took it all the way to the grand final.

Bellamy and Johns talked about changing their style and by the end of their conversation Bellamy had decided he would fly Munster to Sydney’s northern beaches once a week for an education under Johns.

He did it 12 years ago with another young kid called Cooper Cronk and that seemed to turn out pretty well.

Soon after Johns’s phone rang. It was Billy Slater.

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Melbourne Storm have changed their style of play

He heard Munster was flying up for extras and he ­wanted in, too.

By the time the plane landed assistant coach Adam O’Brien and rising half Brodie Croft were also aboard.

Johns advocates a very ­simple style built on solid ­fundamentals.

At Newcastle he and brother Andrew played to principles rather than structure.

Push the forwards forward. Don’t overload them with tactic and big calls, just get them working on rolling forward and then call the play when it complements what you see.

And then simple calls that everybody understands.

Andrew Johns rode that system all the way to becoming an Immortal.

Melbourne went to a similar system this year.

They tossed a lot of their structure away. They roll forward and spread the defensive line and, with set-up no longer as important, such are the talents of their playmakers they have often have two and three shots at the defence in every set of six.

Meanwhile, their opponents labour trying to copy Melbourne’s old style, burning two and sometimes three tackles through hit-ups to set up their big attacking play.

Suddenly the Storm were free.

Their completion rate dropped from last season. They no longer ranked first in completions, dropping to fourth overall.

But by taking more chances the Storm ended 2017 with the competition’s most lethal attack, rising from sixth to first.

Cameron Munster and Cooper Cronk talk as they pose for their team photo.

Johns doesn’t think about football like the popular trend around the game.

Structure is for the dull mind.

Instead he advocates a very simple style built on solid ­fundamentals.

While teams have gone out again this season to replicate Melbourne with their block shapes and sever structure the Storm have actually moved away from it and become more potent as a result.

Other teams like Penrith and Canberra are already heading down that road.

A further drop in interchange would quicken the process but the coaches will fight such a notion and it has no hope of getting through the competition committee when they meet before Christmas.

Matthew Johns has a chat with coach Craig Bellamy Pic. Colleen Petch

So slowly, but with question, the game goes back to its future.

Johns crosses his eyes and develops a stutter when he hears people talk of “eyes up footy” or that “there’s plenty of footy in him” to describe a player.

Dull words designed to ­disguise a lack of a true understanding.

Johns says there is nothing mysterious about it. It is simply a proper football education and the courage to shift away copying what other teams do.

You can’t play eyes up footy, as they say, without two basic fundamentals.

Firstly, the playmakers need a strong education in the game. Otherwise, they don’t know what they are looking at when they see it.

Secondly, they need a strong but simple vocabulary that everybody understands. What good is playing what is in front of them if the playmaker can’t communicate what he sees to his teammates?

After working with Johns and his playmakers over the summer O’Brien took it back to Bellamy at Melbourne.

O’Brien is modest and hard working. One day he will become a genuine head coach and now he gets a first-hand look at what succeeds.

SHORT SHOTS

JUST a couple of days after saying it would take two to three weeks to hire their head coach the Canterbury board announced Dean Pay as the man to take the role.

It surprised many and left the board vulnerable to accusations, from the snipers, of the board again backflipping on what they say,

The Bulldogs got it right, though.

There were a number of applicants but the two leading choices were Pay and assistant Jim Dymock.

The pair were given 48 hours to prepare a presentation to the board on Tuesday night. A lot of their presentation overlapped and so similar were their ideas it convinced the board their preference to hire a former player was the correct decision.

Newly appointed Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs NRL coach Dean Pay.

So satisfied with Pay’s presentation were they the board decided not to go through the charade of interviewing other applicants when they wanted Pay to have the job.

So the process was cut short and he was appointed.

***

WHERE is the big end of town in grand final week? Gone in search of Macklemore?

The NRL won’t admit to it but the stone silence from Sydney’s corporate world shows how much work needs to be done to lift the game back to the profile it deserves.

Forget any talk that the grand final features out of two clubs Melbourne and North Queensland as a reason for Sydney’s lethargy.

Any event tied to the grand final week would have had to be organised well before the teams were decided.

Instead, tumbleweeds blow through the city as the game tries to generate interest in the biggest day of its year by trotting out the ANZ Stadium’s head curator and head chef to talk about their big days.

Talk about scraping the barrel.

Originally published as Melbourne tossed a lot of their structure away and it’s paying off