I want help with Darren Coleman’s answer. About a year later, he toasted rugby in New South Wales.
His happy varsity defeated the Bloody Crusaders, the hill began to fill, and apparently Australia’s second best team, a final with eight wins in Super Rugby Pacific and again swinging again in 2014.
Who is this prophecy? If they say they did, we need to check.
In March 2021, a lot of azure blue ink was issued on these pages about the shame of dismissing Jat-Joud Kiwi Rob Penny.
“He didn’t have Hooper and Simmons and Hannigan!” The cry went away “Give him time! It will take years!”
Penny saw part of the head coach. Number 8 from Canterbury is a tough one, but players aren’t always good coaches. In fact, great players are never good coaches; They can’t explain what they never did.
So, with 292 points in 0-8 and 0-5 reds, 1-5 in 2020 and minus-110 after finishing the season and 12-place in 2019, the board hired a guy who just played rugby.
And here he is, the old DC who played Cannonball, Waringer Rat, and Newcastle Wildfire at Camps, who looks like the best rugby coach of the year in the world.
NSW Waratahs coach Darren Coleman (pictured by Getty Images).
Did he have a good team on paper? Not better than eight wins.
When I looked at Tim Sheet last weekend, when Tahs defeated New Zealand opponents on their soil for the first time in seven years, rolling over Dunedin’s Highlanders, I saw only a few new names and only one of them was ‘Family:’ the old Jamie Roberts, who Originally there were 2022 passengers.
Yes, there were Geoff Cridge, Langi Gleeson and Dylan Pietsch who weren’t around for the 2021 bloodbath, but it’s not a huge upgrade. Ned Hannigan and Michael Hooper have just returned.
The 2021 squad had Tane Edmed, but this is not Tane Edmed, the god of anger and words. Charlie Gamble was there last year, but these mustache muscle monsters don’t do mischief. Ben Donaldson, Will Harris, Dave Poreki: All new men.
The same captain, too; Jack Gordon, hard as a nail, always plays with his heart.
If Rob Simmons’ departure was a cause for frustration, and if he was considered an ineligible replacement, Jade Hallway personally accepted it, since he was a Super Rugby player in 2022, after being dumped by Tahs in 2020.
Ten Admed (Photo by Brett Hemings / Getty Images)
Other players who left the force, including Hallway and Tom Robertson, reported that team culture was in the hole and there were rifts and cycles between coaches and players. Robertson said “there are a lot of problems off the field for Waratah” and Hallway confirmed: “Throbba, I guess, was just telling the truth. It’s more about culture,” noting that the boys needed to take a break.
A year ago, many journalists asked its derivative: “Who will take this job? What is the coach in his right mind? Board fire instead. This is a huge mistake. Shame on you! ”
Coleman said yes anyway. As reported by The Roar at the time, he said he was “extremely excited” and took charge of nine teams: “Three of them died last, three of them had a second end and three were startup teams.” He is the coach of the broken.
Some have ridiculed him for talking about raising players. “Confidence rebuilding” was how Coleman put it, and it included Singalang.
He mentioned his time at Gordon Club, which grew from 2018 to 2020 to win the Shoot Shield, winning his LA Giltinis MLR in 2021.
If the mascots of his playing days (rat, cannonball, wildfire) are odd, the names of the teams he coached rarely come out of the tongue. He coached Benevento, Penrith Emus, The Race, L’Aquila (lower level Italian team), Shuttle of Toyota (promoted to the top league in 2013) and then Giltinis.
But in each case, they have seized it, despite obstacles we can scarcely imagine. “
Some of the most innovative coaches were just so players.
Mike Leach is an American Gridiron coach who grew up playing more rugby than football. He studied football more as a problem than an emotion. He graduated from law school and then earned a master’s degree in sports science, deciding to become an instructor in a sport like rugby that promotes older boys and former stars more than people with a mere gift of analytical minds or inspiration.
Leach literally started in the desert. He was an assistant instructor at the College of the Desert in 1988. In 1989, he coached the Pori Bears in Finland. Eventually, he landed at a ‘real’ college: Kentucky.
His study created a theory: more snap (drama) is equally good crime (attack) almost whatever. So, he resized offensive linemen (120 kg instead of 140), used 4-5 receivers instead of 2-3, trained his players to catch a tennis ball thrown from a machine, used and employed half a clock in the line. Baseball players need to be (more accurate) quarterbacks.
Despite his strange personality (he is obsessed with pirates because ‘they don’t care about good teammates and race and rank and you just fire him if the captain is bad’) he started getting jobs in big programs to teach his ‘wind’. The crime of the expedition. He broke all models for statistics, won with less talented players and took schools from bottom to top. Then he moved on.
But he has left behind better players and coaches.
Coleman isn’t as weird as Leach, but he has unusual theories about what to focus on. He wanted his players to have fun and ‘work with a smile on your face’ and ‘be passionate about the team.’ As he said at his inaugural press conference, ‘that whole fun aspect is huge,’ and he wants to feel the ‘collective humming when there’s a smile’.
“If the boys wake up from bed and start thinking ‘f *** I have to go to training’ you know you’re not doing anything right.”
He wanted practical jokes and jokes; But also “acceptance of all shapes and sizes and religion, race, sexuality, whatever.”
Before dismissing the Happy Warrior Theory, look at the actual staff of 2021 and then 2022 War, look at the type, strategy and technology of the players and try to find a significant difference.
There are predecessors in sports.
In 2005, Liverpool turned the club around by beating Milan 0-3 in Istanbul. We all remember Botham’s Ashes with fear. The 2004 Red Sox broke the Bambino curse.
But really, Tahas himself is an example, several times. From 1996 to 2001, they lost 6–9 in a semifinal in Super Rugby. From 2002 to 2006 they were ranked 2nd to 5th and reached two semifinals and one grand final. Sounds stable?
In 2007, suddenly 13th and then in 2008: 2nd! The top five, until 2011, fell behind in 2012-13 before the 2014 magic. Sixteenth in 2017, third in 2018, twelfth in 2019 and much more.
Time comes, people come, but there is never a dull moment in Varata.
Any predictions for 2025?