Threatened species: How size and cut-and-paste coaching are smothering creative halves
By Andrew Webster
APRIL 30, 2021 (Part 2)
The price of ambition
A couple of years ago, Ivan Cleary watched a junior team’s training session from afar.
For half an hour, he saw a coach put his side through a gruelling opposed session, with spilt halves standing on the left and right of the ruck, running plays that had been clearly cut-and-pasted from an NRL team.
The players were 12 years old.
“I’m passionate about this issue,” he says. “Rugby league coaching at a junior level has becomes so NRL-like it’s ridiculous. I was once at an under-8s game and this kid was a natural offloader of the ball but his coach was on the sideline screaming out, ‘Don’t pass the ball!’
“Rugby league is a game, unlike other games, that you can win purely by size and strength. At junior level, you don’t have to be skilful. And many of these coaches just want to win. My younger son [Jett] is 16. He learnt more playing union and OzTag because he could roam around the field.”
So it’s not just about size but coaching ambition.
Leading player agent Sam Ayoub has had some of the best halves in the game’s history on his books, most notably Johnathan Thurston.
He reckons the issue is a NSW problem because NRL clubs have too much influence on junior teams.
“They’re coaching the daylights out of their players here in NSW, whereas in Queensland they’re not in a structured NRL system,” Ayoub says. “I can tell you because I see it all the time. I could pick three young halves in Cairns, in Townsville, in Mackay who haven’t come through those systems who are standouts because they just play football, as they should.”
Barnes does his best to buck that trend. For example, in trial matches he’ll prevent players from running block plays.
“You do things out of the ordinary to teach them things,” he says. “I’m a skills coach, not a wrestle coach. That’s what I believe in. I leave that to someone else because my heart’s not in it. I’m about gripping the ball properly, passing the ball properly.”
Former Penrith general manager Phil Gould identified these issues more than a decade ago when he established a halves academy, although it no longer exists.
He brought in Trent Barrett to run some sessions. Among the first teenagers through the door were Nathan Cleary and Jarome Luai, the current halves for the Panthers.
“The halfback is born,” Barrett says. “The only one out of the box has been Cooper Cronk. As soon as I saw [Warriors rookie] Reece Walsh touch the ball the other night I thought, ‘Here we go’. He moves like a six. So does Kalyn Ponga. Dylan Brown is another. They don’t have to think – they’re born halves. You’re just hoping these types of players get a coach at a young age who can nurture their skill, their left to right pass, their kick.”
When Barrett was learning his trade at the Dragons under David Waite, the game was flush with playmakers: Johns, Brad Fittler, Brett Kimmorley, Scott Hill, Darren Lockyer, Craig Gower, Craig Wing …
All of them could play either seven or six, centre, lock or hooker. In the modern era, many players are less skilful.
“You’d be amazed how many first-graders can’t spiral pass left to right,” Barrett says.
The Dearden dilemma
Tom Dearden can’t play.
That has been the line coming out of the Broncos for the past fortnight after one of their brightest young prospects signed with the Cowboys for $1m.
It wildly conflicts with the intelligence coming out of junior footy only a few years ago.
“When I saw Dearden as a 16-year-old, he was playing off-the-cuff football all of the time,” former South Sydney head of football Shane Richardson says. “Everyone knew Sam Walker would be a superstar, but everyone thought the same of Tom Dearden.
“It’s bullshit to say there’s a lack of halves. It’s a matter of where they end up and who coaches them. You need a quality coach with patience. As John Lang would say, ‘if you bring a young half into a team, you have to leave them there’. They didn’t do that with Dearden.”
Not that long ago, Dearden was at the front of a long line of quality young playmakers at Red Hill. He played for Queensland under-18s in 2018.
The Broncos also stockpiled Tanah Boyd (now at the Titans), Sean O’Sullivan (now at the Warriors) and Cory Paix (who is being groomed as a hooker).
What would have happened to these players if Wayne Bennett hadn’t been shoved out the door and Anthony Seibold, and now Kevin Walters, brought in?
Erratic coaching has cruelled Dearden, who was told he was going to be the starting halfback this season right up until round one when Brodie Croft, who the Storm gladly let go 18 months ago, was selected instead.
The same head games have been played with five-eighth Anthony Milford, who is a shadow of the player he was under Bennett three years ago.
Three weeks ago, after the loss to Souths, Walters said, “I like what I saw from Milford tonight”, then dropped him. Last week, after Milford turned out for South Logan in the Intrust Super Cup, Walters said he “wasn’t up to standard”, but has picked him for the match against the Titans on Friday night.
The Dearden dilemma is symbolic of what happens at other clubs, who show little patience.
Elsewhere, other coaches simply turn their halves into robots.
For all the criticism levelled at Ivan Cleary for the way he left the Wests Tigers, people easily forget the form of halfback Luke Brooks on his watch when he was named Dally M Halfback of the Year in 2018.
“I told him to run the ball because that’s his strength,” Cleary says. “I’m not sure what he’s doing now.”
The future
Mention the term “eyes up footy” to Andrew Johns and watch his eyes roll back into his head in anger.
“I hate it: eyes up footy,” he grumbles. “Your eyes should be up all the time. That term is just a cop-out from people who don’t know what they’re talking about. A proper halfback should always react to the defence.”
The upside of the quicker ruck from the new six-to-go rules has been the re-emergence of the creative half playing what is in front of him. Witness the form of Benji Marshall at the age of 36, and the emergence of Sam Walker at 18.
“The slower ruck from the wrestle meant you had to play your set plays to get around teams,” Johns says. “Now, with the quicker play-the-ball, the best halves are standing up again. The best teams with the best halves who don’t play structured football are the ones going well.”
And that’s when rugby league is at its best: when it’s unpredictable, played with flair, much like Johns and his brother Matthew at a sun-bathed Marathon Stadium on a Sunday afternoon.
“Although you’re being paid as a professional, you play your best when you’re playing like it’s a pastime,” Matthew said recently.
The Johns boys played like they were in the backyard, like nobody was watching – much like Cleary and Luai play now.
“We were fortunate growing up,” Nathan says. “That sort of football was encouraged. The boys I’m playing with now, we’re very grateful for the coaches we’ve had.”
Could his career have started and ended at one match for the Mt Albert Lions under-11s if not for the restricted weight divisions of New Zealand rugby league?
“I probably would’ve kept playing because I just love the game so much,” he says. “But there were other kids who just couldn’t get into the game.”
