The family tree of NRL coaching stands on the shoulders of a handful of men. This is how far their branches reach.
Here, in the winter sun outside a cafe in Sydney's east, Warren Ryan and Andrew Johns are moving salt and pepper shakers around the table like they're chess pieces."When you get the front door ajar, why jump through the window?" Ryan, 79, asks. "Kick the front door in."
"Then we started working through the middle. Then we'd manufacture some second-phase play. Then we'd move out. It was a mixture of both styles … but first we'd kick the door in." Statistics provided by David Middleton reveal the coaching family tree and how far the branches reach. "There's the man manager at one extreme and I guess that's Bennett," Ryan says. "At the other end of the spectrum there's the scientist, and that was me."Advertisement
"Tactics change, players' physiques change. But the big things only come after you do the little things really well." His innate ability to simplify the game has been as fundamental to his success as anything else and the 2010 grand final between St George Illawarra and the Roosters, coached by Brian Smith, perfectly captures it.
In the past, whenever Bennett dropped a player, the player might respond with a few choice words and then set about proving him wrong."When I went back to Penrith [as general manager of football] in 2011, I walked onto another planet in terms of player entitlement, their individuality, their status within the club," Gould offers. "There was no team mindset.
When Sheens was in his first year as coach at Penrith in 1984, Ryan was three steps behind him as they climbed the steps at the back of the old grandstand at Penrith Park.Later that year, Sheens was named Dally M coach of the year, which he won again in 1990 at Canberra and then 2005 at the Tigers. People regularly ask him who he thinks would make a good coach.
Gould's former players could see Ryan's tactics in the way he coached, but his unique brand of motivation was all his own."I was never that good as a footballer and never had an opportunity to play for NSW, but I always thought you'd train at a higher level of quality and intensity," Gould told his NSW players when he first came into camp in 1992."We changed our attitude to our preparation straight away," Stuart recalls.
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