When I bother with tipping, I have one factor that tends to override every other decision - I almost always tip against sides when they play without their marquee players.
Every club has two or four players who have that X-factor that you really need to broach opposition defences. And so it's not surprising that most teams structure their games around getting those players into the best possible positions to enable them to score or set-up point scoring opportunities.
So it shouldn't surprise that when you take those players out, teams performances can drop off dramatically. It's not just that they lack the talent to break through defences, but they tend to look directionless and confused in attack because they are generally forced to play quite differently and other players have to step up.
So, let's take it as given that marquee players generally make or break your team. As both Manly and Melbourne have shown, once you have a core group of senior, reliable, marquee players you can generally fill in the gaps around them with solid players who can play a role without needing to star.
As I look through the various rosters, there is a very clear parallel between the clubs that have marquee players who perform consistently well week-in, week-out and those who have had marquee players who have been inconsistent, failed to achieve past or predicted levels or who have been consistently injured.
In our case, Jarryd Hayne has been an inconsistent/injured performer while Willie Tonga and Chris Sandow have been disappointing. If you have that much of your salary cap underperforming, it's an unfair expectation on the rest of the squad, who aren't generally superstars to lift to the required levels.
I also believe that the consistent quality of your marquee players, makes a big difference to team morale. If you have the big-money players not earning their big pay-packets, it can't help but create some level of disharmony in the team, as opposed to the marquee players who the other less senior players can look up to as role-models and leaders.
Indeed, you can also see a pretty fair pattern of clubs that get their marquee players wrong suffering badly. The Tigers plummeted following Adam Blair's signing, which combined with Benji Marshall's form dip. Canberra has continually been up against Terry Campese's injuries; the Bulldogs took a massive step backwards following their signing of Tony Williams, the Titan's fortunes have tended to rise and fall based on how switched on Dave Taylor is at any particular time, and so on.
In my view, sustainable success for Parramatta is going to come from ensuring we invest in the right marquee players - that we build our side around players who we know are going to perform week-in, week-out, and set the right example for our players coming through the ranks.
I think that's why so many of us are getting excited about the likes of Nathan Peats and Will Hopoate because they're not only playing well, but you know their going to play just as well next week as they did last week. We have some players now who we can start to base our club around. And they're young too.
It's up to some of our other marquee players - like Hayne, Sandow and Norman to show that same level of consistent desire, commitment and quality. Last week, we got strong performances out of all of our marquee players and so it should not surprise that we won, and won well.
When you get your marquee players performing it tends to be infectious, they lift everyone else including some of your other key players who can tend to be up-and-down as well as your younger players coming up.
Brad Arthur leaves a pretty definitive impression that he's not going to be the type of character who accepts players not performing consistently and his decision to drop Chris Sandow was testament to that. We're going to need to take some of those same criteria and values into our recruitment as we hopefully build a side that can not just lift us off the bottom but which can start to challenge for honours in the years to come.
Replies
IMO 1Eyed a very credible article. I guess the crux of the challenge is to only sign so called marquee players on the big bucks, who have earned that status with a proven track record of ability, consistent performances & minimal injury time.
Just maybe a little less ability or potential ability is worth compromising for consistent quality performances & time on the paddock. The other problem in assessing worth is of course, determining how any prospective player will fit in with the club's culture & the team's environment.
You look at Manly's roster - and Lyon and Matai aren't the most brilliant centres in the game anymore, but neither of them every have a bad week. There are probably slightly more brilliant halves than DCE and Foran but again, every week, you get a very good performance from both of them. When you have those kinds of players, you can then probably afford to carry the Stewart brothers, who are both injury-prone but when their in the side they go from being a great side to near unbeatable.
Mmmm, sorry mate I think 1Eyed is correct. Hayne is undoubtedly our best player & is very gifted from an ability perspective, but he has had some down time with injuries & there have been times in the past where IMO he seemed to switch off during a game.
Zipman, I did say on the Jarryd front "inconsistent/injured". A lot of his performance issues have come back to carrying injuries. However, in saying that I don't think he's performed at his optimum level week-in, week-out. He will have weeks where he makes more than his share of mistakes and whatever the reason - trying to hard, injured, we haven't see Jarryd Hayne at his best week-in, week-out. If we had, we wouldn't have won two wooden spoons because we seldom lose when Jarryd is on fire.
I believe the opposite, I believe Marquee players in most cases, should be game breakers. Hayne/Thurston/SBW are the perfect examples, add Hayne or Thurston or SBW to any top 8 team and instantly they become top 4 and a genuine title threat.
Whether or not a team is in a solid enough position roster wise to get the most out of these turbo charged freaks is another question all together.
True Parody, if they r on the paddock. If they incur a lot of down time through injuries or penalties, then the team is adversely impacted.
I guess IMO team balance in terms of quality is on the whole more desirable than having a team predominately built around one player. I remember when Newcastle let a lot of their players go to keep Joey. When Joey was not on the park, IMO they were hopeless & really struggled.
Parody, ideally, they are both. That's been the beauty of Melbourne's spine - they've had game-breakers who do it week in week out. However, there is no point in having game-breakers if you're not getting yourself in a position to win a game. So thats where SBW fits in so well at the Roosters - they don't rely on him to win week-in, week-out but he is the player who can win you a game when your struggling to breach the opposition. Would Roosters have beaten Manly last week if SBW was in the side. Pretty likely.
I kind of put Hayne in that same category. I want our side to be a team that can make the eight, without Hayne but when he's there and he's firing, we're unbeatable. Our problem was all of our highly-paid or senior backs - Sandow, Hayne, Tonga, Roberts, were all flighty players.
And from our club perspective, we don't seem to have a problem churning out amazing, young talent who can bring a bit of spark to the side. So we need to probably over-compensate on the reliability factor with our marquee players.
Looking at titans marquees for instant, 2013 dave taylor, idris etc also all under performed.
Melb storm marquees, roosters and souths, manly all performed, hence why they were all the top few teams
If you make the finals, do you want a solid consistent marquee player, or do you want a "big game" player as your marquee player.
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