The reason is simple, is at the root of many of the NRL's woes and can be summed up with one word: "coaches". No one will say that, for example, Jared Waerea-Hargreaves is lifting 160kg in the gym because it will make him "a target" and rivals will "go after him" when the season starts. This is the same reason almost no one will say anything interesting in the NRL - at all, any time: for fear of giving the opposition motivation. It is 100 per cent driven by the coaches. Hello? These players endure enormous pain as part of their daily lives. They run headlong into each other for a living, spend the summer doing some things that even soldiers would flinch at and are the biggest, toughest, fittest people in almost every room they walk into between now and retirement. But we wouldn't like the other team to think our man had a big head, would we? They might get cross with him!

The fact is that some of the things coaches use to motivate their charges insult the intelligence of those charges – and it doesn't get more ridiculous and petty than firing up your men against a bloke who excelled in the weights room or sprint track in the pre-season by painting him as a big head. I'm sure most players know they are being manipulated every time their coach pulls out a newspaper clipping - but they play along with it and will themselves to believe it. What happens when a coach successfully uses a newspaper article to encourage his men to breathe fire is that rivals try to get back at him – and he has to encourage his players to say even less than they were saying before, out of fear of retribution. If you're wondering what's behind the no speakies that we see every year in the NRL, it's this: coaches "beating up" things their rivals say, their rivals seeking retribution and the censor's noose getting even tighter as a result. There's no code of ethics when it comes distorting the truth to get a result in a football game. As I'm sure Brian Smith would say: "Just ask Wayne Bennett".

Meanwhile, rugby league struggles more and more to engage neutral people with its vanilla self-generated image. No one says anything. It only gets interesting when a former player is charged with drug trafficking. Coaches may or may not be strangling the life out of rugby league on the field, but they're definitely doing it over the rest of the week, all year. Discord hereby calls for a moratorium, for the sake of the game's public profile and of the colour and character that used to permeate it in this country. Coaches, if you genuinely think that a rival was having a shot at you, or your club, then by all means tape that iPad or laptop to the dressing-room wall. But if you know, deep down, that you would have said a similar thing had you not been scared to death of being deliberately distorted by a your dastardly win-at-all-costs opposite number, then let it go. Let your pumped up, fast, strong, agile super athletes do their job without you utilising that sports psychology degree you got from a Weet-Bix packet.

Break the cycle, friend. Do unto other coaches what you would have them do unto you. Stop scaring your players mute. Enough puerile mind games not fit for anyone over the age 10. Let the game breath and have fun again. Time for a ceasefire. Subscribe to the podcast here.



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