‘Babies’: Adam Reynolds unwittingly exposes ugly coach truth

COMMENT: Broncos coach Kevin Walters has never been able to escape an ugly narrative and comments from his own captain won’t help.

Kevin Walters and Adam Reynolds. Photo by Hannah Peters/Getty Images

COMMENT

The last 12 months has seen Kevin Walters finally silence all those irksome doubters questioning his chops as an NRL coach.

Except the ones slagging him off on podcasts — they continue to be undeterred and mostly his own players.

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After a period of radio silence, innocuous comments from Adam Reynolds over the weekend have reignited the dogged tropes about the folksy coach and stripped bare his methods for another public torching.

Speaking to Aaron Woods on the ‘Footy Talk’ podcast, the injured skipper revisited the work environment that greeted him upon his arrival at the Broncos in 2023 — and it’s fair to say it wasn’t military-grade Marie Kondo stuff.

Describing his new teammates as “babies” who “did not know rugby league at all”, Reynolds depicted a disorder that was a galaxy away from the two-grunt clarity he left behind at Souths under Wayne Bennett.

This included his alarming first brush with his new side’s tactical literacy where he attempted “jumping in a few sessions and just trying to get my front-rowers to lay a three and four man.

“They asked ‘why would we do that?’”

Yes, only 0.002% of us know the innermost mechanics of a professional NRL training session, and what this actually means.

Kevin Walters and Adam Reynolds. Photo by Hannah Peters/Getty Images

But it’s fair to say prior to Reynolds’ arrival, Walters was overseeing a farm at Red Hill of precocious fawns eating glue and knocking heads together like The Three Stooges.

Thankfully for the Broncos, Reynolds decided to “upskill those players and come up with a game plan with Kev”, and barely 10 months later they’d blossomed from ditzy bambinos to apex predators.

It was a terrific turnaround, but it hasn’t helped bury a bizarre undercurrent about the coach that keeps bubbling-up like a cold sore.

Despite leading the Broncos to a grand final, condemning the Anthony Seibold years and banishing the skinny godfather to history - aka Ben Ikin - the narrative still hovers that Walters isn’t a ‘real’ coach.

And even more weirdly, most of this has emanated from within the club.

If you hadn’t heard, Walters occupies a rare position in the Broncos pantheon as a favourite son who’s been sacked twice and mocked internally as many times as he’s been chaired up the Caxton like a Kaiser.

In addition to being unceremoniously fired in 2005 and 2018, who could forget Selwyn Cobbo declaring “he’s not a good coach”?

Or the stunning vote of no-confidence from former Bronco Tyson Gamble who admitted Reynolds was “the go-to man for everybody if you’ve got a question about the team or footy”?

It was pretty damning stuff, especially as a head coach when there’s not much outside your remit beyond “the team” or “footy”.

Unlike your Craig Bellamys and Des Haslers, Walters will always be an uncluttered strategist who was signed for one classic rugby league attribute: keeping the Old Boys happy.

And despite ‘winning’ the role after the club’s first 175 choices were unavailable and/or dead, Walters has remained a tremendous clubman who has operated with insatiable enthusiasm in the face of adversity and his own loose-lipped colleagues.

Reece Walsh talking with coach Kevin Walters. Picture: Liam Kidston.

He kept smiling through a 14th place finish in his first year and a 9th place flame-out in 2022, and even maintained his jauntiness under a measly contract laced with a buffet of performance clauses that afforded the club carte blanche to sack him if he burnt his toast.

Thankfully this deal has now been upgraded to a normal coach’s contract with normal dismissal triggers, but he’d undoubtedly give it all up for the holy grail:

A compliment.

Despite losing Herbie Farnworth, Tom Flegler, Keenan Palaisia and Kurt Capewell and enduring an injury-riddled 2024, it’s the least Walters deserves after keeping Brisbane’s premiership window firmly open.

He has widened his tactical bandwidth beyond folklorish motivational techniques and cryptic press conferences.

As such, any narrative positioning him as Bob Hawke to Reynolds’ Paul Keating should only be coming from us jaded Sydney-centrics down south- not his own dressing shed or Spotify account.

- Dane Eldridge is a warped cynic yearning for the glory days of rugby league, a time when the sponges were magic and the Mondays were mad. He’s never strapped on a boot in his life, and as such, should be taken with a grain of salt.