Chris Rattue: Coaching collapse bad timing

If Ivan Cleary remains as coach next year, he's a lucky man. Photo / Getty Images

There are players whose last-gasp form reversals make them known as coach killers, and if the Warriors take any notice of what happened at Mt Smart Stadium on Sunday the game will come to be known as a club killer.

The Warriors - and particularly the owners - should burn the match tape and ban the word Canberra when they review the 2009 season. The Warriors' big victory was a mirage.

The truth is that so many parts have fallen off the Warriors' machine this year that they could open their own Penrose wrecker's yard.

Sunday didn't change a thing, and nor will anything else that happens this season.

The Raiders were rubbish, maybe tired and distracted by their shock win over St George. The Warriors turned up, and the Raiders turned it up.

Here's the bottom line, which I'll insert near the top.

If Ivan Cleary remains as coach next year, he's a lucky man. His bosses could have easily decided already that Cleary no longer shapes as a man who will win the NRL title out of Auckland, the only yardstick which counts at this point in his career here.

A massive concern is that a major missing ingredient was overall aggression and power up front, which makes you wonder - among other things - about the squad's desperation and desire.

Having been written up as title contenders, the Warriors cruised to near the bottom of the heap.

Forget the Canberra tea party. In the year of so much promise, virtually every key player has gone backwards. The best that can be said is that Micheal Luck still gave it all he's got, and that Sam Rapira could be one of the best offloading props in the game. Some of the others should be opening their eyes or else thinking of England.

Cleary failed to get the damaging bulk of his number one matchwinner (now that Wade McKinnon is a shadow of his former self) Manu Vatuvei into enough positions to shine. Stacey Jones' crossfield bombs became the main avenue for tries. New signings have gone astray, and Cleary has appeared to lose faith in his own initial decisions in crucial positions such as dummy half. Players were half-hearted and out of sync with each other. The attack has been ponderous and predictable to the point of embarrassing.

There are some excuses, including the draining effect of last year's long season which culminated in the World Cup. Simon Mannering, for one, has appeared affected. But there are absolutely no excuses for how badly the Warriors performed this year. The rot, as coaching maestro Jack Gibson once said, is in. It is hard to have faith in Cleary turning it around.

Warriors owner Eric Watson might be peering with interest at the Bulldogs. They finished last in 2008 and now they are flying high, tipped by some to win the NRL title. That's how quickly things can be turned around in the NRL if a few key changes are made.

Their club was in disarray last year. In response, they elevated a loyal club man as their new coach, made a couple of key signings at dummy half and halfback, and were minus the distractions caused by that pathetic twerp Sonny Bill Williams, sport's most useless matchwinner.

That's all. A few well-placed bristles turned into a new broom, but it had to include a coaching change.

The Dragons have performed a u-turn as well under a new coach, but Wayne Bennett is not your average coach. The Bulldogs have done it under Kevin Moore, an in-house rookie with largely the same side.

The Warriors can't claim, in private or public, that they got things right only for the results - due to uncontrollable circumstances - to turn out wrong. They finished too far on the wrong side of the ledger for that.

There are only so many Bennetts, Alex Fergusons and Robbie Deans - coaches who stand the test of time at the same club - out there. Those men are exceptions, not the rule, in continually producing title-winning and challenging sides.

Those who believed that Cleary might be the man will now be questioning that.

It doesn't mean Cleary is an outright failure, or without a future. It just means that in Auckland, while it went well for a while, it didn't work out in the end. That is the story for most coaches, who live on the merry-go-round.

That Auckland is an NRL outpost, not subject to the same comparisons and buffeting as clubs in Sydney and without any history of sustained success has probably saved Cleary's bacon for now. His old Roosters mate Brad Fittler was afforded no such luxury.

With his plans astray, Cleary was not even able to inspire his side through the force of his personality or tactics.

The salary cap system - while not certifiable as kosher - evens out the field and gives a club like Auckland, with plenty of advantages, far more than a rough chance. This is a subjective argument but a third-year disaster would more easily be tolerated. A fourth-year coaching collapse feels like very bad timing. It says Cleary's castle was built on sand.

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The Waratahs are off their rocker signing Chiefs outside back Sosene Anesi for the Super 14. No offence to Anesi, but a lightweight and flighty outside back is among the last things Australian rugby needs. They should be able to find droves of Sosene Anesi-types at the local mall - what Australian rugby needs is grunt and power. Wallaby coach Robbie Deans has been handed a bunch of soft forwards (the belligerent Rocky Elsom and rising Benn Robinson aside perhaps) to work with. There is a certain irony in seeing the tough, hard-working forwards whom Deans himself moulded at the Crusaders bringing the Wallabies down in All Black colours. Australia need a new hardness in their game. Signing Anesi sends all the wrong signals.

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I reckon John Drake, who passed away aged 49 last year, would have cringed at the public attention around his funeral. He might have reminded people that he played "only" eight tests, and suggested they save the fuss for more famous others. I hope I'm not offending his family and friends here, and I only knew and talked to John through his column-writing for the Herald. He was a strong character all right, a bit of a maverick, but he was also self-effacing and not one to bask in strange limelight. He was, to one and all, a loyal, down-to-earth bloke with his own distinct edge. Drake, the 1987 World Cup-winning prop, may have cringed at the thought of a trophy being put up in his name for matches between his native Auckland and adopted province Bay of Plenty, then relaxed a bit when he heard said trophy was one of his World Cup final boots, and finally come to welcome the honour as a healthy part of a sport he loved. Drakey's boot is a great way to remember one of our sports heroes. (As an aside, I once asked Don Clarke's wife what happened to all of The Boot's boots, and she reckoned, in all seriousness, they were given away to one of the Meads brothers.) There is a nice story to Drake's Silver Slipper - on returning to club rugby straight after the World Cup final he gave his boots to his University coach Ken Baguely, whose wife later had one plated as a 50th birthday present for her husband. Ironically, his tragic early death means that Drake's name will live on with extra emphasis through being tagged to his trophy boot. Since it is an integral part of the story, Drake wouldn't even have minded the silver plating.

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Daniel Vettori has become a national cricket selector, which can only mean the skipper isn't happy with the selectors' performances. Vettori wouldn't be taking this step up from his own team if he didn't think it was absolutely essential. There are potential pitfalls and promising possibilities. For now, let's take the latter route. He'll have to be precise in separating out his analysis and personal feelings about players though.

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Athletics copped another jab at the world championships in Berlin, and this one had nothing to do with drugs. You could almost hear the needle scratching across the memorable Vangelis music which accompanied the moving athletics film Chariots of Fire as Spaniard Natalia Rodriguez bashed lead runner and favourite Gelete Burka from Ethiopia in the back during the 1500m final. Burka fell to the bright blue track as the rest of the world rose red-faced in anger. It was an atrocious piece of running. Rodriguez, who finished first, was quickly disqualified, but poor Burka will have to live with the bitter disappointment.

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League loves to label players as the greatest in the world. The player who would get me through the gate quickest is Kiwi "Bouncing" Benji Marshall. I've never seen any footballer from any code more exhilarating to watch. The try he engineered against Parramatta, finishing with a high-speed pass around his back, was staggering. Slippery Eel Jarryd Hayne is the pundits' favourite right now, though. He is on a roll from fullback, but I'm not sure he deserves such loud drum rolls. The TV commentators are winding Hayne fever up to fever pitch. The praise flowed after his performance against Wests, the "game of the year" in the "round of the decade". League has sensational go-forward when it comes to the superlatives.