Paul Kent: Wests Tigers response to Michael Maguire’s walkout highlights problems at the club
Michael Maguire’s dressing room walkout was straight out of Jack’s Gibson playbook. But the Wests Tigers failed to respond, proving the players are the problem, PAUL KENT writes.
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Michael Maguire’s dressing room walkout confused many people over the weekend.
Most thought it unprecedented. A stunning condemnation of the players by their coach.
He was so angry with the Tigers he gave them … silence?
In truth, it was an old tactic.
The undisputed king of the dressing room delivery was former Parramatta coach Jack Gibson, who learned his trade running the doors at Thommo’s old illegal two-up school, which was an education in psychology all itself.
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Parramatta played a good Eastern Suburbs team in 1982 and went into the Belmore Oval dressing trailing 2-0. Ron Giteau kicked a penalty goal to send the Roosters ahead and at halftime Gibson walked into the dressing room and did a quick surveillance of his team.
Nobody understood the power of presence more than Jack. He often underlined that presence with silence.
“When you go out in the second half,” he said after waiting for the room to quieten, “just play as if you’re trying to impress me.”
With that, Jack turned and walked out.
No instructions, no game plans. He put it all on the players and effort.
“If I got a player I wanted to tell him what could make him a great player … and it was never any great plays,” he once said. “It was intensity and discipline — when he had the football and when he didn’t have it.”
The Eels must have listened. Parramatta came back to win 9-4 that day in ’82, and took their second premiership two months later.
Like Gibson, Maguire was looking for another way to reach his Tigers Saturday night but, unlike Gibson’s Parramatta, the Tigers showed him what they lack.
There was no intensity or discipline.
Skipper James Tamou spoke after the game of players turning on each other out on the field. He made sure to say he was a believer in Maguire because, too often, such losses create an environment where coaches lose control of the narrative.
Maguire did actually talk to his players at halftime Saturday, even if it was somewhat brief.
Basically, he said, you guys dug this hole, so it’s up to you to dig yourselves out.
And then he left.
The Tigers have not finished in the top half of the competition since 2011.
Much of the fallout since Saturday’s 66-16 loss to Melbourne has been on Maguire’s halftime walkout, incorrectly reported, and their feeble response after the break.
If their lack of performance was a coaching problem then it would have been fixed when Michael Potter replaced Tim Sheens for the 2013 season.
Or when Jason Taylor replaced Potter for 2015. Or when Ivan Cleary replaced Taylor for 2017.
There is a clear pattern happening here.
Maguire is the unfortunate example of the pressure that is at Wests Tigers, where it has been easier to replace coaches than underperforming players.
It is not a coaching problem at the club. It is a player problem.
Maguire’s small addition to this is the recent signings of several players who Maguire would not have let within a postcode of the South Sydney team he coached to the premiership in 2014.
His small mistake is not coaching but in the odd recruitment, and the pressure to bring them in.
But that pressure is being applied externally with each loss.
The failure of the players to bite down on their mouthguard on Saturday and have crack
— forget about the 26-16 second half scoreline, the Storm went from 40-0 at halftime to 60-0 midway through the second half before finally wearing up — underlines the weakness at the club.
The Tigers have to recruit character first and talent second. It sounds frightfully easy but requires tremendous discipline and, also, patience.
Hard, when fans on the hill are booing and demanding better.
Gibson always recruited character first, a lesson followed to varying degrees by coaches afterwards.
Another day at Parramatta the Eels were copping a fair hiding by halftime and Gibson walked into the dressing room prepared for anything.
Except, perhaps, the sight of Gibson sitting on a plastic chair which he had placed on top of the rubbing table.
The awkward sight got only more awkward as the players sat down and looked up at Gibson looking down at them.
Jack said nothing.
The players looked around awkwardly, unsure where to begin and, as the minutes continued to tick by, Gibson said nothing.
Finally the Eels got the nod to head out for the second half and Jack wanted to embarrass them into a performance, and so finally spoke.
“See how I look up here?” he said. “That’s how you look out there.”
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