What separates a successful representative team from the not-so-successful?

With early discussions raising the prospect of the current NSW Origin team having the potential to rank as the best of all time, it seems like a reasonable question to ponder.

Should we start with the man in charge?

There are calls being made for Queensland to change their coach, Paul Green. On the flip side, Brad Fittler is garnering his share of praise for engineering a record breaking series win away from home.

Let’s be clear about the role of the coach at this level, because it’s a completely different beast to coaching at NRL level.

Origin coaches are put in charge of the elite in our game. They have a small window, time wise, to create team bonds and combinations. At this level, the senior players will bring a wealth of their own ideas to the table. It’s then the task of the Rep coach and his staff to take the best of these opinions, devise clear games plans and get immediate results

Breaking it down to simplistic terms, they have to ensure that they don’t stuff up the talent at their disposal.

Freddy Fittler (image via Fox Sports)

Let’s begin with a couple of examples of Fittler’s coaching and the influence of the players.

In Game One, Tommy Turbo was given a roving commission. For someone named as a centre, he did a very good impersonation of a fullback, bobbing up on both sides of the field in attack.

In Game Two, the Blues backs surprised their coach with their early match carries. From Freddy’s comments, it appeared that it was not part of his match plans.

It’s obvious that from a coaching perspective, Fittler gave the players the green light to back what works for them at an NRL level.

How different is that to the Queensland philosophy?

The answer to that is perhaps clear when their captain spoke about their lack of motivation. It doesn’t seem feasible that a Maroons team would ever report for duty unmotivated. 

Has the task of creating team bonds been a fail? I’d suggest it has.

Successful NRL coaches have also achieved success with Origin teams, see Bennett and Gould. But it’s also fair to say that famously successful Origin coaches aren’t necessarily going to make good NRL coaches. Some never aspire to such a career. With respect, the coaching credentials of Paul Vautin and Mal Meninga will remain solely at representative level.

Perhaps that failure to inspire means that Paul Green is not the right man for the job for Queensland. Is he entirely responsible for their failure?

I believe there is a more significant reason for the disparity between the Origin teams, and it’s quite straight forward.

The performances in Origin can be traced to the form of the NRL clubs of the selected players. In the past, the Maroons could select the odd player from reserve grade, or virtual unknowns. Unfortunately their current team has selected far too many players from bottom eight clubs.  I’ll use the two teams selected for Origin 2 to illustrate this point.

Of the 17 players selected for Queensland, 8 players came from clubs currently outside of the top 8. That’s just on half of their side. Only six Maroons came from teams currently in the top 4.

In comparison, just 3 Blues players were selected from teams in the bottom 8. Furthermore, 11 of the NSW line up were drawn from current top 4 clubs.

To give a mathematical score to this disparity, I allocated points to NRL clubs, commensurate with their ladder position. Accordingly, players from the top club, Melbourne, would receive a score of one, whereas Broncos players would attract a score of 16. Obviously, the lower the score for the team, the better.

Using this method, Queensland scored 125 points, or 7.35 points per player.

In contrast, NSW totalled 86 points, or 5.06 points per player.

At Origin level, that difference of over two points per player is significant. Without sounding too derogatory, it’s the equivalent of selecting more Roosters players against having to select more from the Dragons.

What makes the Maroons scenario just as gloomy for Game Three is that little would improve with regard to selecting players from in-form teams.

Harry Grant (image via NRL.com)

It has been mooted that Grant, Ponga and Tabuai-Fidow are likely to be called in as replacements for Feldt, McCullough and Molo. The rationale behind these selections would be positional changes such as Ponga to fullback, Holmes to wing, Tabuai-Fidow to centre, Capewell to back row, Arrow to lock, Fa’asuamaleaui to the bench and Grant to dummy half.

Examining the current ladder position of their clubs, that would mean bringing in one top eight player, albeit from the top club, and two bottom eight players. They would be replacing a top 8 player and two bottom 8 players. The overall team ranking of 125 would improve by just three points to 122.

The Blues will be forced to make just one change at halfback, but have the option of bringing in top four halves like Moses or Reynolds. Their ranking might worsen, but by only one or two points. Indeed, NSW could make multiple team changes and still have a swag of players waiting in the wings at Penrith, Souths and Parra.

Unfortunately for Queensland, they face a “Cane Toad Calamity” with few selection possibilities in the top teams. They could look at options such as Opacic instead of Tabuai-Fidow at centre, and select the Hammer on the wing, but that wouldn’t bridge the gap.

The bottom line is at least one third of the Queensland squad will mostly be provided by Queensland based clubs. Until those teams can find their winning ways, the Maroons will be selecting too many players who are used to losing.

And isn’t that a wonderful thing for Blues supporters.

Eels (and Blues) forever!

Sixties

If you liked this article, you might consider supporting The Cumberland Throw.