Brian Smith Articles

The Knights had a go at Mitch many times in the game against the Roosters. . He may be the lightest in the squad but hes tough. Its what NSW need
 
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i wonder if it would have been pearce had Bird been fit? i think he is there purely for the combination with anasta and that he shouldnt have much trouble steering the forwrd pack around seeing they are half roosters aswell.

Hopefully when KG comes on he doesnt have to play 5/8 and can come on as lock and just roam around, playing a similar role to FB, cause he makes a few hit-ups anyway, only thing is he will have to defend in the line, which he is more than capable of.
 
Jonno_Knights said:
i wonder if it would have been pearce had Bird been fit? i think he is there purely for the combination with anasta and that he shouldnt have much trouble steering the forwrd pack around seeing they are half roosters aswell.
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Definitely. Anasta was the only reason Pearce would have got in.
 
Yeah, my thoughts was that when Wallace was injured, they would have been deciding either Mullen or Finch or Gidley. But when Bird was injured, they took Anasta. Then I reckon they narrowed it down to Mullen vs Pearce. And Pearce got through because of his combo with Anasta.
 
Brian Smith: Bellamy leaving Blues behind is understandable

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RUMOURS that Craig Bellamy is thinking of walking away from the NSW Origin job may have come as a shock to many, but as a fellow coach it wouldn't completely surprise me.

In this case, I'm largely reading between the lines, because Craig hasn't confirmed his thinking and I'm certainly not privy to what goes on behind the scenes.


But I know from my own experience of coaching Country Origin which is a bit of a joyride compared to the intensity of a three-match interstate series that representative football can be a tough gig.


I found coaching against some of my own Parramatta players an awkward situation.


And I can understand that Craig, who seems very close to the boys from Melbourne, might not feel comfortable trying to orchestrate the downfall of the Storm's Queensland contingent.


I realise that is all part of the job, but believe me, it is not easy to get your head around.


The other factor that might be playing on his mind and here I could be adding up two and two to make five is that it seemed to me that Bellamy's intensity might have been a bit beyond some of the NSW players.


All clubs have different methods of preparation, and if there were NSW players who were not on the same wavelength as their coach it wouldn't surprise me.


I thought there were some worrying signs there that maybe the players weren't able to keep up with the coach. I don't know if that was the case. As I said, I'm reading between the lines.


My other overriding impression from the series was that, when push came to shove, Queensland were able to take their game to a new level, but NSW couldn't.


I think NSW probably shocked the Maroons a bit in game one with the intensity they were able to generate.


Queensland went away, tinkered slightly with their side, and were ready to spring an ambush at Suncorp Stadium.


In game two it seemed NSW weren't able to generate the same level of intensity they did in the series opener.


Possibly they simply weren't able to replicate the intensity because it had taken such a big effort or perhaps they were guilty of thinking the Bellamy factor had made them bulletproof.


Whatever the case, Queensland upped the ante in game two and gave the Blues a lesson. By game three, it seemed the Maroons held all the aces and, when the game was on the line, came up with the killer plays.


That made it three series in a row to the Cane Toads, and they are one heck of a team.


If you go through the respective line-ups, there is no doubt Queensland had all the game-breakers and go-to men whatever you want to call them.


Out wide, they had guys like Greg Inglis (Kempsey, Queensland?) and Israel Folau, who are just freakish talents. Billy Slater, Johnathan Thurston and Cameron Smith were also dominant forces.


Man for man, they just had an awesome squad. And given that so many of their players are in the early stages of their careers, the big question is how NSW can stop them extending their dynasty.


Unfortunately for the Blues, they will no longer be able to call on Danny Buderus's toughness and tenacity.


He will be missed next year, make no mistake. Champions always are.


One player who will be a key figure in any NSW revival will be Kurt Gidley.


Kurt was my man of the match on Wednesday, even in a beaten team.


He showed he could dominate at the highest level, and I expect him to start doing so on a regular basis.

Newcastle Herald
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Footy really needs vocal but fair fans
BY BRIAN SMITH
10/07/2008

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NOWHERE is safe for the ill-disciplined individual in footy anymore.

With video replays and post-match scrutiny by officials and the media, players have become used to the harsh truth that if you mess up you will almost certainly get caught and pay the penalty.

Coaches and officials have compliance issues to meet NRL guidelines about what can and can't be said and done, particularly on match day when emotions are running high. And we all know what sort of pressures the refereeing team are under to get it all right at every game, which includes the way they conduct themselves.

The other important people on match day, the fans, were brought into the equation this week by the ugly incident at Parramatta Stadium involving Petero Civoniceva.

Thankfully, the culprit was identified and punished in an appropriate fashion.

At the very best this was an extremely poor choice of words to use in barracking a player, and at worst it was a racial attack which has no place anywhere, let alone at the footy.

It made me proud to be a part of a sport that will not tolerate this sort of behaviour off the field, in this case, or on it. An on-field example was Dean Widders copping a racial slur in 2005 from South Sydney's Bryan Fletcher, ironically at Parramatta Stadium as well.

Or maybe it's not so ironic.

I can't imagine some of our stadiums having too much of a problem with inappropriate, over-emotional fans.

In fact some of them and the clubs using the almost empty arenas, would love to have any level of passion happening.

Perhaps the smaller capacity at Parra Stadium and the proximity to the players is the right environment to generate that atmosphere of excitement we all want whether we are on or off the field.

Is there anything better than the feeling you get as you head to a footy ground that you know is filling up? It almost always guarantees the players will respond and a good time will be had by all. Even the disappointed losing team and fans know they have been part of a big occasion.

I find it hard to believe that some clubs continue to play in these empty caverns season on season, seemingly without doing something about getting more people there.

Even with the third-highest average gates in the NRL in 2008, Knights CEO Steve Burraston recently went to great lengths to let our supporters know just what is at stake and why we need to fill our stadium.

Sharks CEO Tony Zappia let fans know his club can't survive if the footy public don't get to the game in bigger numbers. That's getting on the front foot.

We all know the deal with big stadiums offering guaranteed income to clubs to use their facility, but what about the harm that's doing to our sport?

During this period around State of Origin, NRL club games have been smashed in terms of the quality offered to the fans.

I find it embarrassing that a high-profile sport like ours is at times played in front of "friends and family" crowds.

Don't those clubs feel that way too? Don't the executives at the NRL?

Something surely needs to be done.

Bottom lines on balance sheets for clubs and TV contract commitments are very important in the short term and so is crowd behaviour. But so is having an excited stadium full of footy-loving fans. Those long-term balance sheets and TV contracts will shrink in proportion to the quality of the event we are offering our fans.

This week Russell Crowe joined a growing list of people concerned about the value of TV revenue, and that is a very important piece of the income pie for our sport. But TV coverage of our game is also our best form of advertising.

For mine, it's an ugly look for footy when those cameras pan to thousands of empty seats and the associated lack of atmosphere.

EnergyAustralia Stadium last Saturday night and a recent Tigers match at Leichhardt Oval on a Sunday afternoon stand out like beacons for excitement. Before a ball was kicked that packed-house look portrayed our sport in the most favourable of ways.

I would love to see that way more often at every ground.
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Herald
 

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Time for NRL to play the numbers game
BRIAN SMITH

NRL officials are invariably dealing with a number of issues at any given time, but it is a fair bet that the issue of numbers is not among them.

By numbers, I'm talking about the ones players wear on the back of their jerseys.

For 100 years, the numbering system in rugby league has basically remained the same, except for one change in the late 1980s when Australia shuffled the numbers of our six forwards to fall in line with the international system.

Other than that, the numbers are just as they were back in the days of Dally Messenger and his mates.

Fullback wears jumper No.1, five-eighth is No.6, halfback is No.7 and so on.

While I appreciate that there is a sense of tradition about this system, the reality is that the game has changed greatly over the past century, especially during the professional era.

And in the modern game, the numbers that players are allocated have become increasingly irrelevant.

This has been highlighted in the past two weeks when the Knights' coaching staff have sat down for our weekly selection meeting.

When it came to Kurt Gidley, we have come up with a role that we think benefits him and the team.

Effectively he plays dummy half in attack, and fullback when we don't have the ball.

But what number do we give him: No.9 or No.1?

If it is confusing for us, it must be similarly baffling for TV broadcasters, the media and fans when they sit down to study our line-up.

Just to add to the confusion, last week we had to name Chris Houston on the wing on our team sheet, because we already had six forwards listed in our starting pack.

What our squad showed last week was that the game has outgrown the traditional numbering system. To start with, each team has four fresh reserves these days, wearing jumpers 14 to 17.

Those players can fill any position. Player 14 on one team could be a prop, but player 14 on the opposition could be a halfback.

Then we have scrums. In the past few years scrums have undergone a makeover so that they are almost unrecognisable.

The hooker, who used to strike for the ball, now often packs in at lock so he can deliver a pass from the scrum-base.

It is also standard practice to see backs packing down in scrums and big forwards standing in the backline.

And each week teams have late changes, through injury or otherwise, that result in players handling roles that have no relation to the numbers on their jumpers.

I think our numbering system is totally out of date.

Indeed, the two rugby codes are the only sports I can think of that persist with a numbering system based on the position that players are supposed to be occupying.

In most other sports around the globe, players are given squad numbers at the start of a season and stick with them.

In some codes, the senior players get the low numbers and rookies work their way down the list as they progress.

In other cases, players stick to those numbers throughout their career and use them as a trademark.

Michael Jordan, with No.23, is perhaps the most famous example.

I think it is time for the NRL to adopt the squad number system.

Each season we would start with our full-time squad and number them from one to 25. Senior players would have first choice of which number they wanted, and so on down to the rookies.

Players from outside the full-time squad would come in wearing jumpers 26, 27 et cetera.

I think this would have a couple of real benefits. Firstly, clubs would be able to attach players' names to the jumpers, which would be a marketing tool.

Secondly, I think it would help the majority of fans identify players.

This season Kurt Gidley has worn jumpers one, seven and nine for Newcastle. He is so versatile he could have a different number every week.

Why not let him have the same number for a whole season, or indeed his whole career?

There would be a certain status about "owning" a number.

And with regard to our fans, maybe we should start giving them a bit more credit.

The majority are smart enough to appreciate what a player is actually doing in a game, rather than being brainwashed into thinking he should play a certain way because of the number on his back.

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Give Kids number 19. 1. Fullback plus 9. Hooker = 19

So thats that the reason House was named on the wing :lol:
 
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well if we had a system like most American sports have then we could retire the jerseys of our great players (we could only do it for only 1 or 2 games with Johns).

NFL have a system where players get to choose a number for their position (e.g. and Offensive line could choose say a number between 50-59). So there is still individuality with players numbers but they also can represent certain positions. (Do not how well it would work in league though as our rosters are much smaller and players change positions much more than NFL players do).

Or their could be a system similar to how the ESL do it, where you get a number depending on the order that you played in the team that year. (like how when Johns played in Warrington he was number 31 cause he was the 31st player to play for them that year). Dont know if they still do it though.
 
I would love the system Smith is talking about. Imagine if we had this earlier, people would be wearing jerseys of Andrew Johns and his trademark number.
Barry Bonds in baseball wears 25 for example (it us huge in America, the mention of a number reminds people of an MLB, NFL or NBA player for example).
 
yeh the NFL system works but their number as jonno said is based on position, and its essentially to seperate the "elligible" receives from the "non elligible" recivers. the main problem with that is that i think the College Football has a slightly different numbering system. That being said, sports with this squad number system dont have players playing in specific positions that require certain individual such as league. Though, I don't see much problem with the system. perhaps a more defined system needs to be in place? such as backs specifically having numbers 1-13 or whatnot, not that it matters because regular you see backrowers playing 5/8. I think leave it as it is, helps commentators actually having a clue on where a player is playing.
 
Brian racks up his 500th game as coach in two weeks time, against none other than the Eels at EAS. :razz:
 
Should be good, especially against his former club. You'd think with a number like 500, he would top the list for most games, but he's the 3rd behind Wayne Bennett and Tim Sheens.
 
Brian Smith: Stop time-wasting - the referee saga is getting us nowhere
BY BRIAN SMITH

RUGBY league must be one of the toughest sports of all to referee.

If you think about the number of rules that can be breached, the number of players on the field and the pace of the game, there can be no argument whatsoever that the man with the whistle has a bloody tough job.

I know this for a fact, having spent every Saturday afternoon in my teenage years refereeing junior games in Casino, my home town.

In any single game of footy, there are hundreds of tackles. And virtually each and every time a tackle is completed, there is a potential penalty waiting to be blown.

Was the tackled player held down too long?

Did he play the ball correctly?

Were both the markers square?

Were all 13 of the defenders back 10 metres or however far the referee insisted they retreat?

Was there any suggestion of an illegal hold, such as a grapple tackle? Did the defenders make any high contact with the head or neck, or did the man with the ball illegally raise his elbow as a fend?

The list goes on and on.

Even with all the technology we have available via the video referee, it is impossible for the officials to get 100 per cent of the decisions right 100 per cent of the time.

As an experiment, when you are watching tonight's TV games, concentrate hard on every ruck, especially on the defensive players as they peel off their tackled opponent.

Eventually a penalty will be awarded. But was it really that much different to any of the rucks which preceded it?

Over the past few weeks, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the referees and the role they play in our game.

It has been well documented that the Knights have been on the receiving end of some horrendous penalty counts this season.

It is very disappointing, and a bit embarrassing, to realise that we are the most penalised team in the competition.

It is absolutely bewildering to know that we have received the fewest penalties in our favour.

The stats would suggest we are an undisciplined team. But are we really that much worse than any of our rivals?

I'm the first to admit that sometimes this season we have been our own worst enemies. There were four or five penalties in our loss last week to Cronulla that were simply unprofessional.

But the penalty count was 11-6 against us, so there were a number of penalties that I believe fell into the "subjective" category.

Now I am not casting any aspersions on the integrity of our referees, because I know they are doing the best job they can.

And I'm not the type to bother wasting my time on conspiracy theories.

But I have a couple of hunches about why we keep falling out with the NRL's law enforcers.

The first reason is what I call the underdog factor.

The media, fans and bookmakers usually expect the favourites to win. They doubt whether the teams lower on the ladder, or teams riddled with injuries, are good enough.

I wonder whether this has some sort of subconscious effect on our referees. Certainly they come under a lot more scrutiny if a high-flying team are beaten in a boilover, and the losing coach then proceeds to criticise the ref at the post-match media conference.

Life is sometimes a lot simpler if everything proceeds as expected.

Unfortunately, more often than not this season, we have been underdogs.

The other major factor I have identified is that the flow of penalties tapers off in the final quarter of a game.

That is a statistical fact, right across the NRL.

Given that teams are more fatigued in the latter stages of a match, it is hard to believe that somehow their discipline has improved.

Instead this trend suggests that referees, for whatever reason, become more lenient the longer a game goes on.

This counts against us, big time.

In most of our games this year, we have been coming home strong in the final 20 minutes.

Statistically the Knights are one of the leading teams in terms of tries scored in the last quarter of games.

We have staged a number of comeback victories this season and pride ourselves on our overall fitness.

But it is very hard to keep fighting back if the opposition are trying to slow the game down and the referee is not as vigilant as he may have been in the early exchanges.

Anyway, we have wasted enough time and energy debating the referees this week.

The best thing we can do is move forward before we become bitter and twisted.

In many ways, I see the Knights as being like a young challenger taking on a heavyweight boxing champion.

We have to accept that it will be hard to get the judges' decision and win on points. But nobody can argue if we land a knockout punch.
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Brian Smith: Anthony Mundine always cut above on the road to greatness
BY BRIAN SMITH

WAY back when I was coaching St George in 1992, we had a special group of kids come through and win the SG Ball Cup (under-18) competition.

What made their win even more remarkable was the fact that we had only a few teams in that age group playing in our district.

Given that most of the other clubs had far bigger nurseries from which to recruit their junior rep teams, we realised our particular squad had some talent in their ranks.

In a school holiday break, we got those kids together, as well as a few others we had brought in from country areas, to give them a bit of a run-down on how they could make the transition from promising kids to first-grade footballers.

As head coach, I gave them the usual spiel about discipline, sacrifice and hard work the main ingredients required for any player to succeed.

When I finished addressing them, I tossed up a bit of a statistic that I hoped would give them food for thought.

"Hey boys, there are 20 of you in this room," I said. "Of you 20, the law of averages suggests that probably only three or four will get to first-grade standard.

"And the odds are that there is only one of you who will go on to become a real top-line player.

"So we can all save each other a lot of time and effort if that one player could put his hand up right now."

A young Aboriginal kid immediately reached over, grabbed the hand of another Aboriginal kid, and raised it in the air.

The first kid was a pretty handy junior player who never quite kicked on.

But he was obviously a good judge of talent, because his mate certainly went on to make a name for himself.

Kid by the name of Anthony Mundine.

Pretty soon it was obvious to everyone at Saints players and the coaching staff that the young fella they called "Choc" really was a class above.

He had good bloodlines, of course.

His dad, Tony, was a champion boxer in his time and young Anthony had obviously inherited a heap of genetic gifts.

There are plenty of great athletes playing top-grade rugby league, but very few have as much sheer natural ability as Choc.

At training, his teammates used to watch some of the stuff he did in disbelief.

I'll never forget these boxing drills after our last training session each week, when we had Gorden Tallis and Choc on the punching bags.

Gordy would be belting the hell out of it like Mike Tyson, and Choc would throw 1000 punches every 10 seconds. The rapid-speed firing of his fists was just amazing.

I was lucky enough to blood Choc in first grade in 1993, and he was an established player by the time I finished at Saints in 1995.

I had no doubt then that he was going to become one of the best players in the game.

He was certainly heading down that path, too, and was a key player in the Dragons teams who lost the 1996 and 1999 grand finals.

It is also sometimes forgotten that he played for Brisbane in 1997 and helped the Broncos win the Super League grand final.

Choc played a couple of Origin games for NSW and I'm sure that, had he shown a bit more patience, he would eventually have worn the green and gold.

But in early 2000 he walked away from the game to pursue a boxing career. At the time, a lot of people thought he was mad to tear up a contract reportedly worth $600,000 a season.

But Choc put his dreams before dollars. He was disillusioned with league, for whatever reason, and wanted a new challenge.

Eight years on, and you have to admire what he has achieved in a vastly different sporting arena.

He has won world titles, proven the doubters wrong, and probably made a lot more money than most footy players ever will.

In the process, he remains the same genuine person.

A lot of people see Choc speaking out about various issues and probably get the wrong impression. He comes across brash and controversial, and perhaps Aussies don't like our sporting stars to be like that.

But people close to him know a different Choc. A bloke who is humble, fiercely loyal and willing to help anyone in need.

Not forgetting, of course, that as a committed teetotaller he is a fantastic role model and advocate for his people.

I would have liked to attend Choc's fight in Newcastle on Wednesday night to cheer him on, but the Knights' junior presentation dinner took priority.

Rest assured, we have some promising youngsters coming through. Who knows maybe even another Anthony Mundine.
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Herald
 
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