Eels Blogs

In the end, Parramatta’s coaching decision came down to whether it was more committed to its desired model of installing a football manager or if it really, really wanted Jason Taylor.

The general manager of football decision appears to have been made early in the process and had the full support of both the CEO and the board. I’m led to believe that by the time I wrote a piece on the topic, the club had already basically decided on some sort of variation on that model. As was reported at the time, Brian Smith was an early favourite for the role, and his relationship with Jason Taylor probably had JT in the box seat for the coaches role. Tim Sheens is also believed to have been interviewed, although its not clear whether that was for the coaching or management role.

However, there does appear to have been a dearth of options for the General Manager of Football role. While, the position has been employed widely across football and US sporting codes, it’s a relatively new position in the NRL, and where it has existed it has tended to be considered as a recruitment or logistics-focused role held by sporting administrators. Phil Gould’s appointment at Penrith is really the only current like-role, and there are few Phil Gould-status figures in Rugby League today. When negotiations with Brian Smith broke down, Daniel Anderson emerged as perhaps the only real option for that position.

Having most recently held a managerial role as referees boss, his background as a teacher, and having worked in setting up structures at St Helens, the Warriors and Parramatta, Anderson appears to have had enough runs on the board to gain unopposed support for the general manager of football role.

However, the club’s decision to take that route, no doubt complicated it’s search for a coach. With senior coaches, generally used to having full control of football matters, I believe it quickly emerged that a new or younger coach was likely to best fit the model, and when the players expressed their preference for a new generation coach, that was likely set in stone.

Having conducted interviews, the candidates were quickly whittled down to two. Jason Taylor and Brad Arthur. Both had a history with the club. Arthur impressed Sharp and deputy chair Tom Issa. My feel on that one, is that Arthur’s values and approach to football probably aligned with Sharp’s values. However, Taylor - a tactically-oriented coach who once worked for our club as a marketing manager - impressed with his presentation and ideas.

So much so that, he managed to swing the rest of the votes on the board including the Parrafirst candidates Peter Serrao and Lawrence Shepherd, who voted with Robert Sassen on their preference for Taylor. No doubt, that surprised Sharp and Issa and the fallout resulted in the unfortunate press that followed, as a rocked Sharp pressed his case publicly.

Despite the difference in opinions, my impression was that it was felt across the board, that there wasn’t a great deal between the two - JT’s past troubles at Souths are believed to have hurt his standing with Sharp and Issa, while Brad Arthur was viewed as a strong candidate by all, but those who voted for Taylor believed he could better engineer a turnaround of the club’s poor on-field performances. However, with the decision probably the most important one that this board is likely to make, all parties appear to have held firm to their individual opinions rather than voting on factional lines.

When the vote went to Taylor 3-2 (with the sixth board member Mario Libertini not present at the vote) that should have been the end of the matter. Scott Seward was to begin negotiations over terms and conditions and pretty much everyone within the club expected that Taylor would be coaching the Eels in 2014. Despite reports that a decision on Taylor would have needed to go back to the board, that was never the case. His appointment had been ratified at that earlier board meeting and it was just a matter of reaching an agreement with the club.

Negotiations broke down on Monday. Taylor expressed at the final junction his concerns that he would not be able to work under the model that was being put to him. That difference of opinion was reported in the initial media reports and was confirmed by Taylor himself on Fox Sports on Wednesday night. I believe this would have genuinely shocked all parties within the Parramatta club, as Seward had even talked publicly about its desire to appoint someone into that role, weeks prior. Seward would have had little option but to halt negotiations and send it back to the board. They would have been presented with two options. Appoint Jason Taylor and abandon, or radically modify the idea of a General Manager of Football, or to re-open negotiations with Brad Arthur. It has been reported that Mario Libertini, present for this vote agreed on the Arthur option, while the other swinging vote was reported to be Peter Serrao, a former premiership winning junior representative coach and someone I know had been a strong proponent of the GMF role. It does not surprise in the least that he would have considered Taylor’s position unacceptable and instead sided with Arthur and retaining the preferred structure.

I’m not sure if Taylor believed he had enough board support that he would be able to sway the board to change its position on the GM of football matter, or that he felt that the belting that the club was receiving in the press would have made it too unpalatable for them to reverse their position. If those were Taylor’s thoughts, they were misguided. The Tuesday night board meeting, saw it decided 4-2 that the role should be offered to Arthur, and negotiations were quickly wrapped up on Wednesday morning although not before the story had managed to leak out to Josh Massoud at The Telegraph and Ray Hadlee.

When Anderson’s appointment is formally announced, the board and CEO will have kept true to their belief that this was an opportunity to re-model our football operations, following the predominant trend in worldwide professional sports. It will stand as a topic for debate, whether the model is right for the NRL. I know there are many within the code that steadfastly believe the head coach should be responsible for all football matters, and that obviously includes a lot of today’s senior coaching community. I believe the fact that the code’s history of club’s installing “coaching directors” over the top of underperforming coaches, as Souths did with John Lang and Jason Taylor, makes many uncomfortable with the idea. However, the improvement in Penrith’s performance across all of its grades is an encouraging sign that it can work in Rugby League. I’ve been a strong proponent of the role, because I believe that a modern NRL coaches role is so demanding that they cannot afford to be distracted by the administrative side of the role. I consider it a brave decision, and the right one, and I believe that under the circumstances the Anderson and Arthur combination is about as good as we could have come up with after Smith and Taylor shot themselves in the foot.