In the distorted, bizarro realm that is the NRL, where every rookie is trumpeted as a superstar ready to steer his team to premiership glory, the search for a genuine playmaker is the ultimate quest.
“Good halfbacks are as rare as rocking-horse shit,” premiership-winning coach Warren Ryan once said.
It’s why Newcastle will outlay $13 million in the hope that Dylan Brown can transition from a six to a seven. Daly Cherry-Evans, meanwhile, remains in demand just about everywhere, save for his own club, at the age of 36. And then there’s Lachlan Galvin, who can pick and choose which club he’ll collect a seven-figure-a-season pay cheque from, all while still in his teens.
What happens when, in the coming years, veterans Cherry-Evans, Adam Reynolds, Ben Hunt, Cody Walker, Kieran Foran and Chad Townsend can’t go on? Where are the emerging maestros ready to take their places?
How did it come to this?
Andrew Johns, perhaps the greatest halfback of them all, pinpoints several reasons for the dearth in quality halves.
“The big one is weight divisions, because the little kids aren’t playing,” Johns says.
“They’re scared for their safety or their parents don’t want them to play. And if they are playing, they’re not learning their trade because they’re not digging into the line and understanding space and depth, how far to go, because they’re not playing kids twice their size; they are three or four times the size.”
The eighth Immortal points to the game’s premier No.7, Nathan Cleary, as evidence of how weight divisions can nurture rather than stifle talent.
“There’s a story Nathan Cleary and [father and coach] Ivan talk about, where Nathan played his first game in Auckland in open category. He came off and just said no, it’s not for me,” Johns recalls.
Daly Cherry-Evans, Lachlan Galvin and Dylan Brown.Credit: Michael Howard
“Nathan and Ivan are quoted as saying, if they didn’t have unders and overs weight divisions, he wouldn’t have been playing. And this is our greatest halfback.”
The issue extends beyond physical disparity. During his time as Newcastle’s foundation coaching director, Allan Bell earned the reputation as a “halves whisperer”, providing specialist tuition to Andrew and Matthew Johns. The latter has likened discussing halves play with Bell to “talking to John Lennon about music”.
“They have sized the game up and dumbed the game down,” Bell says. “They’re quite big units. The ones who are smaller are getting knocked around. You don’t see the athleticism you used to see from the halfbacks. Steve Mortimer, Johnny Kolc, Mark Shulman and Dennis Ward wouldn’t get a game today the way it is.”
Bell argues the unlimited interchange rule in junior football is contributing to the problem, even suggesting it is affecting the career longevity of the game’s most skilful practitioners.
“Even Cleary is getting knocked around,” Bell says. “As great a player as Andrew [Johns] was, he only played 250 games [he made 249 appearances for the Knights]. And he was a tough defender.
Nathan Cleary is the game’s premier No.7.Credit: Getty Images
“The rules are wrong because you want the cleverest players playing the game for the longest time. That’s not how the rules are framed these days.”
Then there’s the issue of junior development. Johns believes there is an over-coaching epidemic that has spread from the elite game to the grassroots level.
“When kids are coming through from the age as young as 10, 11, 12 and then right through to junior reps, coaches coach footy out of them,” says Johns, an advocate for young shot-callers to practise their skills in the bash-free environments of touch footy and Oz Tag.
“They want kids playing like robots. It’s all about completing sets, kicking long, not making errors. If you look at Johnathan Thurston, look at myself, look at Nathan Cleary; have a look when we were 19, 20. The way we were playing at 29 or 30, it’s light years away. You gotta let kids play.”
Brad Fittler, another legendary half now analysing the game alongside Johns at Channel Nine, draws parallels with another football code.
“There’s a really good documentary on learning that I saw on soccer and it showed the difference between American and Brazilian soccer,” Fittler says.
“So when fans sit there and watch Brazilian soccer, they talk about control and space. In America, they tell the kids where to pass the ball, what to do constantly. You don’t learn and it’s very much like what’s happening now from juniors upwards is they’re constantly told what to do, which hole to run, where to do it, how to do it, where to kick, instead of just allowing it to happen naturally over time.”
The result is a generation of halves who, with a handful of exceptions, lack the instinctive brilliance that defined their predecessors.
“As a halfback, you learn your biggest lessons on the field. You learn when you make mistakes,” Johns says.
“How long since you’ve seen a halfback chip and chase? It doesn’t happen any more.”
Then there is a crop of exciting, unproven youngsters waiting for their turn. Several clubs are caught in a twilight zone, not quite sure what to do before they are ready to make their debut. Canterbury have promising halfback Mitchell Woods, Manly have Onitoni Large and Joe Walsh, the Dragons have Jonah Glover and Lyhkan King-Togia, the Titans have high hopes for Zane Harrison, the Eels have Lincoln Fletcher and Talen Risati, there’s Cody Black at the Broncos and Nathan Cleary’s younger brother Jett is trying to break through at the Warriors.
In several cases, clubs are looking for a bridging player – which is why the Raiders and Sea Eagles are in a tug-of-war for Jamal Fogarty – to hold the fort until the anointed, long-term option is ready to emerge.
In the case of Glover, St George Illawarra’s off-contract NSW Cup halfback, he must decide whether to continue to bide his time at the Red V or switch to one of the rivals currently chasing his signature.
Rising star Jonah Glover.Credit: NRL Photos
“The next step is to play NRL,” Glover says. “I can’t do too much until I get picked, so my main focus is to play consistent Cup footy and try to steer my team to victories.
“I’m just trying to stay involved and do the best I can.”
Glover won the Hastings Deering Colts player of the year award while at Brisbane Tigers for the best player in the Queensland Cup. The halfback moved south to the Bulldogs, struggled with homesickness, suffered a turf toe injury that wiped him out for most of the 2023 season, but stuck it out and came back in time to be part of Canterbury’s Jersey Flegg-winning side.
However, understanding he was down the pecking order of Bulldogs halves, the chance to earn a development contract and complete a full preseason with the Dragons was too good a chance to pass up.
Like many players of his generation, Glover’s formative years were ravaged by COVID. He had to make do with park football in 2020. For some players, particularly those based outside Queensland, their entire season was a write-off.
“I love playing at the Dragons and if the opportunity came up to stay, I’d stay,” Glover says.
“If there’s a better opportunity for me to play consistent first grade [elsewhere], I would enjoy the challenge of taking up the next step to another level.”
No one has cashed in on the scarcity of halves quite like Brown. Having played almost all of his senior football at five-eighth – and struggled to step up in recent seasons when Mitchell Moses has been unavailable – he will become the highest-paid player in league history when he wears the No.7 jersey made famous by Johns at the Knights
“They’re paying him to do a job he hasn’t done yet,” Bell says.
So how do you encourage halves to flourish and weave their magic?
“You’ve got to bring endurance back into the game,” Bell says. “There has to be a period where the big blokes get tired, then they can come into their own.”
The final word goes to Johns. He reckons there’s another reason why the artists are vanishing from the game, although it’s an issue that perhaps is almost impossible to address.
“How many backyards are there in Sydney?” Johns asks. “You can’t play backyard footy any more.”
Michael Chammas and Andrew “Joey” Johns dissect the upcoming NRL round, plus the latest footy news, results and analysis. Sign up for the Sin Bin newsletter.
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