"Tough footy" is BA's calling card. Anyone who bothers to listen to his press conferences will have heard him use that word - 'tough' - a hundred times. Last night, in questioning his side’s attitude, he said something along the lines of "we certainly didn't turn up to play tough footy".
What this season has shown, and which was particularly evident last night, is that "tough footy" is not a sustainable strategy for success in the NRL.
In the context of Parramatta let's consider what "tough footy" entails. For the past couple of years, it's meant that blokes who are physically out-sized by the players they compete against, performing at higher levels of effort and commitment than their opponents. That's the way, you would describe it in sporting parlance.
If you work past those industry terms, what you are actually talking about are human beings who are willing to suffer pain and hurt more than the people they are opposing.
And we're not talking temporary hurt here, we're talking potential long-term injuries and pain, some of them will carry around with them for the rest of their life.
Programmed into every human being is a survival instinct - fear or flight. Which is not to say that humans will not put themselves in harms way, if there is sufficient motivation; thousands of wars throughout the ages have demonstrated that.
However, for the most part, we try to avoid extreme levels of pain and suffering when we can.
Over the past two years, Brad Arthur has managed to motivate, what is a modest playing roster to over-achieve. They have done so by running harder, tackling harder, and just generally being more committed than their opposition. Rugby League is a pretty simple game at heart - and doing just that, can take you a hell of a long way. It has been an extraordinary coaching performance to extract the number of wins he has, out of his roster, which for the most part has been put together via a series of opportunistic acquisitions.
However, maintaining that level of motivation, I would argue, is near impossible. The blokes who have busted their arses for the club over the past couple of years, have generally been rewarded with contract upgrades. As they get older, they get into relationships and have children, and priorities change. And the inevitable injuries that come from “tough footy” start to add up. Some players come and go and group dynamics are effected. All those things mean that every game is going to get tougher to go out and put your body on the line week in, week out.
On Saturday night, with the knowledge that they were already out of finals contention, and with no way to conjure that motivation, or that energy that is required to win at tough footy; we saw what remained. And it wasn’t pretty.
What exacerbates the problem for Arthur, is that loyalty is clearly very important to him. He expects it, and he returns it. However, the result of that loyalty is you’re hanging onto players beyond the point where they are willing - or indeed, where it’s probably fair to ask them - to play that same style of football. It’s why in the NFL, where a lot of the players used are nothing more than human battering rams clanging around into each other, that professional careers average just three years.
It’s also worth comparing this approach, with the only club in the NRL that is the benchmark for sustainable success - the Melbourne Storm. The club has a focus on retaining its top half dozen players - which includes world-class representative backs, and a couple of massive bodies in the forwards - and then simply shuffles the rest of the roster, in and out, with a focus on players who have a point to prove.
It’s easy to make Brad Arthur a scapegoat. I’ve gone on record as saying that I think his success over the past couple of years, means he has earnt the chance to fix the mess. But if you were in the non-existent football director position, you’d also want to see a recognition that maybe some key assumptions have not stood up over a period of time and that there is a need for a fundamental rethink in some areas.
Replies
When BA is finally punted I'm going to post a screenshot of a blog I posted on the 5th of June 2014 at 7:33pm were I first dubbed BA the bush coach and sad how he will do do fuck all for Parra . Another brilliant early call by the Fong .
What about a screen shot of the bet you made last year?
I can do that Rubber .
Frankie, you're spot on.
If we produce an offload our players are more surprised than our opposition.
BA is ordinary and the content on the above blog is also relevent.
Maybe we could call him Winston Churchill.
I'm blue and gold through and through, but i'm almost at the end its getting hard to justify the punishment to myself. Watching them is like sticking needles in your eyes.
Funny thing about your Winston Churchill comparison, that's exactly what I was thinking just the other day. The right man during a crisis but out of his depth when things are back to normal.
Have to disagree about BA deserving to be able to fix the mess . This is the exact mentality that has seen the club be a failure for much of it's history .
BA has no excuses because he has the team he wants , many saw the issues the team had last year such as piss poor attack and easy defence bust yet BA didn't , we have never had good attack or defence under BA in 5 years yet he somehow deserves to remain coach .
Des Hasler took the dogs to 3 grand finals and only missed the finals once yet their fans and board wanted him gone and they sacked him , BA has been coach for 5 years and we are favourites for the spoon yet he deserves another season ? This is why we are a two bit club .
The Bulldogs were in a steady decline over multiple seasons.
Brad Arthur took a wooden-spoon team. Took them to the edge of the finals in his first two seasons, got enough wins that we should have made the finals despite the salary cap bullshit, and then finished fourth last year.
I have no qualms that if BA cannot turn it around in the first quarter of next season, after having the opportunity to fix his roster then you have to look elsewhere. Personally, I think he'd walk anyway.
But to say something like "we have never had good attack or defence under BA in 5 years" when we finished fourth last year is ridiculous.
Exactly my thoughts on the unsustainable tough footy diagnosis
But don't forget phil, it wasn’t only Arthur's motivation that enabled players to overachieve - emotional times, like playing after a season where points were stripped previously made each player more resilient and super hungry for success.
Yes that emotion was unsustainable, so what the club really needed was to purchase players who could match the opposition physically and compete without needing to be super human.
And this is where Brad fails - our recruitment especially in the forwards has been diabolical, with only Brown being a near topline player. It's also been well known we have the smallest and lightest pack in the comp.
Can ba bring out good in a player - yes
Does ba have the ability to recognize and recruit the players needed to win a competition - NO
Sorry phil, a head coach's role is to do understand both principals . And yes we should be making him the scapegoat.
And another thing, the development of players under Arthur's term has been diabolical. We've had 3 players come through in the past 4 years.
And there's no doubt Brad had the resources to put together a better roster. When you resort to paying players like Scott and Watmough 600 and 700k per season, it lessons you're cap space. Too many quick fix players rather than purchasing younger forwards with potential.
I believe we were extremely close to nailing Vaugn. If we had that extra cap space, we would have.
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