Back when he was coaching the Roosters, Jack Gibson would receive selection advice – albeit unsolicited – from the club’s backer, Kerry Packer.
Figuring the money he tipped in entitled him to a say, Packer would contact club boss Ron Jones with his team list for the week. When it was relayed to Gibson, the original supercoach delivered his verdict.
“That’s a very good team,” Gibson mused. “But it won’t be the f—king team running onto the paddock.”
If there is one inalienable truth in rugby league, it is that the coach lives and dies by their selections. It is a lesson Laurie Daley has learnt the hard way.
In his first stint at the helm of the Blues, Daley had Immortal adviser Bob Fulton and a cavalcade of club powerbrokers – some well-meaning and others self-interested – in his ear. Regardless of who he picked, it was always going to be a mighty task given Daley was up against the greatest Maroons team ever assembled.
No game exposes character quite like Origin and some of the players Daley picked the first time around were unable to put the cause above themselves.
This time Daley got it right. The opening Origin match of his second tenure as coach was won in the Origin war room, well before the teams ran onto Suncorp Stadium. The series will be decided there, too.
When I sat down with Daley recently to discuss his selection philosophy, one comment stuck in my mind.
“I think loyalty is a key factor in anything,” he said. “And trust.”
It would have pained Daley to overlook Tom Trbojevic and Jarome Luai, whose previous deeds in sky blue would have weighed heavily in his thinking. However, Trbojevic has been playing on one leg and Luai has lost one after making the move from the Panthers to the Tigers. He couldn’t trust them in their current form.
Laurie Daley got his selections right.Credit: NRL Photos
And then there was the non-selection of Terrell May. On any empirical level, May has been the best front-rower in the NRL this year, save for the mighty Payne Haas. For reasons never properly articulated, May was flicked by the Roosters and then snubbed by the Blues, a decision the armchair critics would have seized upon had the NSW forward pack not stood up at Suncorp.
Before making that call, Daley picked the brains of Blues staffers Boyd Cordner and Matt King, who worked extensively with May during their time at Bondi Junction. He picked Max King, a genuine Blues bolter nobody saw coming.
It’s a move that had the potential to backfire, but the Bulldogs forward was faultless, running for over 100 metres and not missing a tackle on debut.
This time, Daley ignored the outside noise and went with his gut.
Like picking wingers Brian To’o and Zac Lomax, despite initial concerns he couldn’t carry both due to a lack of match fitness. Or opting for two halfbacks in the belief Mitchell Moses and Nathan Cleary would put their egos aside and share the responsibility of leading the team.
To be fair, most of the harder calls were already made for Daley. Predecessor Michael Maguire dropped fullback and captain James Tedesco last year, and when a concussion knocked incumbent skipper Jake Trbojevic out of the reckoning, the coach was spared a difficult conversation.
Even then, when all those who were picked played their part, this wasn’t a memorable Origin. It had none of the zip and crackle of classic rugby league matches such as last year’s series decider, or the 1989 grand final, in which Daley played.
For all their yardage dominance, the Blues were conservative with the football. Nor did they fully utilise all the weapons at their disposal. Moses possesses the biggest boot in the game, but it was underutilised; the Parramatta playmaker kicked just four times to Cleary’s 16.
Latrell Mitchell produced a highlight moment, but his involvements were few and not all of them positive.
“I think NSW, if they were on tonight, they could win by 40 or 50,” Andrew Johns said in commentary on Nine afterwards.
The Blues can’t afford to be so profligate if they expect to wrap up the series in Perth. The penalty count won’t always be in their favour, injuries and suspensions will at some stage conspire against them and the Maroons won’t be as listless with the series now on the line. Not all of the calls going forward will be so easy to make.
It is easy to pick and stick when you are winning. Billy Slater was part of a largely unchanged Maroons team that thwarted Daley during his initial, barren years with the clipboard.
Now it is Slater, in his role as Queensland coach, who is under the pump. Sack the skipper? Push Tom Dearden into the halfback jersey? Bring back Selwyn Cobbo?
All of a sudden, everyone has an opinion. Daley has learnt that only one matters.
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