The Sydney Roosters are in dead last place on the NRL ladder and its not looking like they will get any better any time soon. The side has completely given up, they are carrying millions in bad contracts and the players they hoped would kick on never have.
The one area the Roosters have looked to hold it together though is discipline, handing out fines left, right and center, dropping players, hell they fined Willie Mason for taking a piss.
So how in the hell can the Roosters allow their coach, Brad Fittler, to get pissed the night before a match?
Now people have come out in Fittlers defense. He is a good coach, he is a good bloke, he was just letting off steam, its a one off. That’s all fine.
You’re fired.
In the NRL the most important person at a club is the coach. The way a coach conducts himself goes right through the club, its effects every grade and it effects how players apply themselves to the job at hand.
You want examples?
Look at the way Wayne Bennett has walked in and turned around a complete joke of a club in the Dragons, or the way Brian Smith turned a boozy club run on whats good for the boys into an incredibly professional and well drilled outfit in Newcastle.
It all comes from the coach.
The role of a modern day coach is complex. He has to be feared, but trusted. He has to be someone that scares you into doing your job to the very best of your ability, and yet be able to make you feel like the most important player in the game, even if you are the 18th man called in 24 hours before a game.
He has to be able to inspire you, make you believe in yourself, and yet if you make a mistake, you need to be able to hear him breathing down your neck, even when he is not actually there.
Integrity is everything in this regard. If a coach says one thing and does another, he will lose his players. If he undermines a player, they will never forget. As a coach you have to be as solid as bedrock, its your job, and the entire club at all levels relies on this.
You can’t fine players and drop them for turning up to training with alcohol in their system when you are stumbling around hotel rooms the night before a game.
Don’t think this is a first, sure everyone makes mistakes, but you don’t go from being an all feared, all seeing coach one minute to going out and getting pissed with the boys the next. This has to have been going on for some time and when you look at the Roosters results, it seems to suggest that at first, the players liked having Fittler as their coach, but over time, he lost them.
Looking forward, how does Fittler possibly instill any discipline on players? When 18 year olds are coming into first grade and they know they behave better than the coach, how can they possibly respect him?
How can Fittler honestly call together the team before a training session and do a blood alcohol test? How can he fine anyone for anything after the embarrassing way he has supposedly fined himself.
Its over. Its completely over, and if Brad Fittler had any sense, he would have stood down with immediate effect.
