Graham Lowe: When swine flu wasn't an issue

As if coaches didn't have enough to worry about, now they are facing the swine flu pandemic.

Thinking about it, I'm not sure how players of years gone by survived.

There never used to be a blood bin until the mid-1990s and there was certainly plenty of the red stuff around before then.

The arrival of HIV and awareness of other infectious diseases certainly got everyone focused on the dangers.

But I can't ever recall any player picking up a disease on the field before the precaution was put in place. And players certainly didn't shy away from a bloody dispute on the park.

Now the swine flu has caught the attention of all clubs in the NRL but I wonder where it is all going to end.

Most coaches I knew wouldn't accept any type of excuse from a player playing poorly, even if it came with a doctor's certificate. Their remedy or cure for any illness was to introduce the player to the reserve grade coach. The players generally got better pretty quickly after that introduction.

Thinking back it amazes me there weren't epidemics started from the old-style dressing rooms.

Most grounds nowadays provide players with their own locker space and the dressing rooms themselves are as clean as operating theatres.

They used to be living theatres of drama, comedy, honesty and fun.

Super League introduced the American style of locker room and it is one of the positives that did come from the ARL/Super League war.

Player welfare has come a long way, but it has been at a cost to some of the traditions of the game.

Certainly the true characters of league have disappeared - I think one of the reasons is the dressing rooms are so sanitised. Those characters just couldn't survive.

Blood, vomit, spit, gore, bandages, empty beer cans, ice and many other unmentionable items littered the dressing-room floors of some of the most famous clubs in the world. In the corner there would a couple of ice boxes filled with beer for after the game.

Funny thing is no one left the dressing sheds with a disease.

Even the media played their part in it. Now all clubs have media managers and post-match interviews are carried out in controlled environments.

This is a far cry from the days - not too long ago - when the media all crushed into the dressing rooms to do interviews after each game.

It was open slather and everyone accepted it. Players were interviewed at will and most handled it superbly.

Female journalists were often in the heart of the dressing room. It was not a problem because the players respected them and the job they had to do.

It was also a very steep learning curve for many of the young reporters.

They quickly learned the art of gaining respect from footballers or they were dealt to in some imaginative ways.

Like most coaches of the time, I did find it hard if we had lost and I was cranky because the last thing I wanted to do was talk to the media, but I had to.

Emotions sometimes boiled over but the cooler heads usually prevailed.

But the atmosphere of those dressing rooms was special. The walls oozed with history, memories and tall stories.

The ghosts of the past mixed with the new players recovering after their first games and the moments were special.

A special memory that sticks in my mind is a young Mathew Ridge sitting down with a huge smile on his face after his first ever game of league.

Everyone in the dressing room knew a star had been born that day. Ridgey's outstanding first game for Manly against Cronulla signalled a great career in the making. His feats now sit alongside Manly's greatest ever players.

This was also a time before "post-traumatic stress disorder" or "player burn out" as it is known in football.

No player was ever willing to let on he was suffering any type of sickness or injury just in case he lost his position.

I'm not suggesting players today are soft, because they certainly aren't and the pressures on them are also great. But it is very different to how it was.

I think much of it is better but also some of it not as good.

I certainly don't know what I would have said if a player came and told me he had swine flu.

LOCKYER TO STAND TALL

I was blown away earlier this week after reading that New South Wales planned to target Darren Lockyer in next Wednesday's second Origin game.

This was after their boffins had discovered new statistics on his defence.

It seems in previous seasons (according to these stats) Lockyer was at his best with bodyguards on the field looking after him.

Their stats apparently show the big players used to think twice about running at Lockyer because it was likely they would get smashed by his Bronco and Queensland teammate Tonie Carroll (now retired). So now they seem to believe that with Carroll no longer there they will get an easy ride. Yeah right!

Lockyer has been targeted in defence all his career.

It makes me laugh some of the information these stats guys come up with. They should stick to what they are best at and that's making the coach a cup of tea.

Good coaches rely on their instinct not statistics.

All the pressure is now on the Blues and in particular their coach, Craig Bellamy. He will know only too well why his team copped a hiding in Origin I. And it wasn't because of refereeing mistakes, as he is trying to claim. The best thing he could do is call in his stats guy and ask him for a cuppa.

Make no mistake about it, Bellamy's head is on the chopping block.