Robert Craddock: Why Kevin Walters must be subjected to things he does not want to hear

Kevin Walters needs to hear the brutal truth. He might not like what he hears, but it could be the one thing which saves his coaching career and gets the Broncos back on the right trajectory.

Head coach Kevin Walters pictured at the Brisbane Broncos training session, Red Hill, Brisbane 14th of June 2021. (Image/Josh Woning)

Sometimes in life the voice you need most is the one you don’t particularly want to hear.

This is the sobering reality Kevin Walters and the Broncos face as they plot a road map out of their current crisis.

It is becoming clear if Walters is going to save his hide as a first grade coach he needs to be challenged and guided more by people around him.

In the months before he passed away this year, the late, great The Courier-Mail scribe Paul Malone was visited by his league-writing mates in hospital and he asked them to detail all the staff changes at the Broncos this year.

“They sound like a lovely bunch but who’s the head-kicker … you know, the bloke who says all the things no-one else wants to say?’’ Malone asked.

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Corey Parker will rub Kevin Walters up the wrong way by giving him feedback he won’t like, but that could work wonders.

The room fell silent.

It was a fair question then and still is. And it’s why Brisbane must press ahead in its hot and cold and now curiously half-baked relationship with Corey Parker and find a way to get Ben Ikin involved in the club.

When Ikin missed out on the chief executive’s job last year one board member was heard to say the club was chastened by his criticism of the Broncos on NRL 360 and duly asked him about it in his job interview.

They were concerned he might have created scars among the playing group.

Dear oh dear. Talk about getting things upside down.

Instead of being offended by it, they should have seen it as a plus that a strong-willed, independent thinker had identified problems in the club and would speak his mind, on air, to the club, to the players … whoever.

Ben Ikin would bring star power and eloquence the Broncos so desperately need as they attempt to sell the idea of brighter days ahead.

With Peter Nolan gone from the director of football role, it’s worth the club having a crack at Ikin.

The Broncos’ stocks have never been lower.

In grand eras of old, you could have sent Buck the horse to do contract negotiations for the club because offering a Broncos contract was like offering a Springsteen ticket.

Not any more. The club needs a football manager with star power, eloquence and the ability to sell the dream that the club has brighter days ahead and you can be a part of them.

They need a pitch and a presence. It has to come from someone who represents the future without being associated with the recent grizzly past.

Ikin would do it better than anyone.

Prising him from the (cushy) host’s chair on NRL 360 would not be easy but if the Broncos don’t make the phone call, they have not done due diligence on the job.

Parker is an ­interesting one.

Over the past year it’s almost as if he’s played Katy Perry and the club Orlando Bloom so many times that they’ve gone their separate ways and reunited.

But that says more about the club’s fickleness than Parker, who is who he is … a hard-marking, no-nonsense, occasionally aggravating character happy to deep dive into a serious commitment with the club.

Always his own man, Parker was grudgingly respected rather than loved by many teammates but that sort of vibe can work nicely as a coach.

Parker will rub Walters up the wrong way by giving him feedback he won’t like — and that’s great.

Walters has to be prepared to listen and see Parker’s words as the spoonful of medicine he does not enjoy but eventually will feel better for it.

Imagine the satisfaction if they can make it work.

Originally published as Robert Craddock: Why Kevin Walters must be subjected to things he does not want to hear