Distorted coaching records

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Official NRL commentator of the UK Royal Family
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Looking at the current crop of NRL coaches three stand above all others.

Bennett, Bellyache and our own Des.

From a pure success rate you would need to rank these 3 in that order but I feel that gives a false impression of the pecking order.

Let's look at Bennett and Bellyache. Both very good coaches, motivators and man managers. But how about the elephant in the corner. Both these guys have for the majority of their success been one team wonders while also having effectively the QLD SOO dominant spine. Yes Bennett won with st George but failed miserably with Newcastle and Broncos 2.0.....

Bellemy has never left the comfort of his Melbourne bolt hole and has had that spine right up until now. Will be interesting to see over the next 3 years if the fairy dust continues to fall South of the border. The only time he has had another job it was with NSW and that didn't go too well did it.

This brings me to Des. He too had his major success with Manly 1.0 before moving to the dogs where I think that he was successful given 2 GF appearances in those first 3 years. If one of those games go the other way then he has to be considered No.1 on that list.

Fast forward to today. If and it's a big If Des can succeed at Manly 2.0 then even without maroon coloured glasses I would have to consider him as top of the list.

Thoughts?
 
Agreed. If the dogs sides he coached had halves that were a little sharper they would have had a much better chance of glory.
 
I mean I'm no Bellamy fan but did you ever think that maybe....just maybe he played a role in shaping that spine and those players individually to what they were
Melbourne have been able to poach all the good up and coming stars for a long time. And the fact that they built that spine during their cap rorting is no accident. Any other team would have had the cap tear that squad apart (E.g. us after 2011).

Plus they have led the way in rule bending, dirty play, and outright cheating in that time too.

Bellamy is no doubt a good coach but he has had plenty of help. If Hasler can turn our current squad into a top 4 team this year then he would blow Bellamy out of the water.
 
I think you are underselling Bellamy as I think he is a great coach who has had an ability to extract every ounce of ability out of seemingly Neville nobodies. Sure he had the benefit of the Big 3, but as @Disco has pointed out, he is as much a reason for their success as they are for his.

In saying that, his record from 2006-2009 is tainted and inflated by an illegally assembled roster but I think his record since has shown him to be rightly considered one of the games best ever coaches.

I think all three you mention are great coaches. If I were to rank them, Bellamy, Des and then Bennett. What Des did for us in his first stint was remarkable and beyond what I believe most other coaches could have achieved even with the same roster.
 
I think coaches should be measured on not losing grand finals, which can sadly rules out all 3 of the subjects of this thread...

TB on the other hand never even came close to losing a grand final... is he the modern day SuperCoach??
 
I think coaches should be measured on not losing grand finals, which can sadly rules out all 3 of the subjects of this thread...

TB on the other hand never even came close to losing a grand final... is he the modern day SuperCoach??
I’m confident SuperCoach TB will go his entire coaching career without losing a grand final.Can those wannabes Bennett, Bellamy and Hasler boast that record? :D
 
Des lost in 2007 to a melb team 20-25% over the salary cap.
Who were later stripped of their win.

Melb have had something like one local junior in 20 years, still alowed to use the best state competition teams as their feeder clubs.
Bellamye maybe a good coach, but one who has had everything laid at his feet for his whole career.
 
I'm in no way saying Bellemy isn't a good coach. He does seem to be a very good man manager which is half the job done.

The spine he had was no doubt moulded by him but like them or not that spine were special. It's the same oil that made QLD unbeatable all those years.

One team cities like Melbourne and Brisbane also distort the numbers. Sponsorship dollars, stadium, feeder clubs and the rest.

Put that in the mix and Des is a mile ahead working out of demountable facilities with a crackpot board and brookvale oval.
 
I'm in no way saying Bellemy isn't a good coach. He does seem to be a very good man manager which is half the job done.
Well I'll say it then. Bellamy is an average coach. He failed at SOO level and 100% of his early success came from teams that were cheating the salary cap. From that Bullshyte early success came the reputation. Since then players have stayed and gone there for unders to play for them, effectively cheating the cap again. To this day they continue to profit from the cheating that happened back then.
 
Melbourne's TPAs as indicated by the NRL is around $800,000 a year more than other clubs. That's a couple of top performers extra than most clubs can afford. And then there's the sanctioned extra TPA like grant to Smith which is a disgraceful demonstration of the inequity in the comp. Having said that Bellamy does seem to have a knack in getting the best out of players. I have him No 1 and Des No 2, but if Des can do the miracles with Manly by 2021, he should be considered No 1..
 
Des lost in 2007 to a melb team 20-25% over the salary cap.
Who were later stripped of their win.

Melb have had something like one local junior in 20 years, still alowed to use the best state competition teams as their feeder clubs.
Bellamye maybe a good coach, but one who has had everything laid at his feet for his whole career.
Let us not forget the record 40 nil Grand final Thrashing . Des made Bellamye look an amature like Trent Barrett . Absolutely humiliated him and his team . Bellamye had no answers to the Manly mauling of the Storm .
Bellamye maybe a good coach but against Des he runs second best .


He took a while but he did not break his promise ;)

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Well I'll say it then. Bellamy is an average coach. He failed at SOO level and 100% of his early success came from teams that were cheating the salary cap. From that Bullshyte early success came the reputation. Since then players have stayed and gone there for unders to play for them, effectively cheating the cap again. To this day they continue to profit from the cheating that happened back then.

SOO is a bit of an anomaly though. Fattys bunch of no names beat a star studded team coached by Gould. QLD do seem to have treated the game way better than NSW in the past.. In saying that would really like to see how Bellamy does go without his big stars.. Wasn't Melbourne going pretty bad last year during the penalty crackdown? As soon as all the complaining forced the league to back down guess who started benefiting..
 
Bellamy is an outstanding coach but I don't admire his methods as he uses every dirty trick in the book to get an advantage. However it's clear that one of his strengths is discipline, and it is rare to hear of Storm players getting in strife. Aside of course from bringing the entire game into disrepute with the massive cap cheating scandal. Even then the group didn't appear to splinter or attack the club publicly, they mainly rode it out as a group.
I spotted this yesterday which reminded me of the generally good record for off-field discipline of Storm players in recent times. https://www.foxsports.com.au/nrl/nr...l/news-story/1bbcdffd432063bec8e521c736f7ae4d
 
Bellamy is an outstanding coach but I don't admire his methods as he uses every dirty trick in the book to get an advantage. However it's clear that one of his strengths is discipline, and it is rare to hear of Storm players getting in strife. Aside of course from bringing the entire game into disrepute with the massive cap cheating scandal. Even then the group didn't appear to splinter or attack the club publicly, they mainly rode it out as a group.
I spotted this yesterday which reminded me of the generally good record for off-field discipline of Storm players in recent times. https://www.foxsports.com.au/nrl/nr...l/news-story/1bbcdffd432063bec8e521c736f7ae4d
No coach who’s modus operandi is to cheat until you are stopped can possibly be described as an outstanding coach. Please, since when did cheating enable someone to be outstanding? You must have a fundamentally different understanding to me of what it takes to be outstanding.
 
No coach who’s modus operandi is to cheat until you are stopped can possibly be described as an outstanding coach. Please, since when did cheating enable someone to be outstanding? You must have a fundamentally different understanding to me of what it takes to be outstanding.


Its not cheating until its declared as cheating and banned from the game. Before that its called strategy
 
No coach who’s modus operandi is to cheat until you are stopped can possibly be described as an outstanding coach. Please, since when did cheating enable someone to be outstanding? You must have a fundamentally different understanding to me of what it takes to be outstanding.

Maybe I do. What I mean is I don't think he is an average run-of-the-mill coach. And I don't mean he is an outstanding beacon of moral virtue. He's a sneaky cunning innovative win-at-all-costs coach, who has accepted all the advantages the Storm has been gifted, and taken others illegally, and won a lot of games.
 
Maybe I do. What I mean is I don't think he is an average run-of-the-mill coach. And I don't mean he is an outstanding beacon of moral virtue. He's a sneaky cunning innovative win-at-all-costs coach, who has accepted all the advantages the Storm has been gifted, and taken others illegally, and won a lot of games.
That makes him successful, not outstanding. I’d hate for my kids to come to believe that cheating will make you outstanding in life. There are many people in this world who are successful but have done illegally or immorally. Those people are any but outstanding.
 
Team P W L PD Pts
3 3 0 48 6
4 3 1 28 6
3 2 1 10 6
4 2 2 39 4
3 2 1 28 4
3 2 1 15 4
3 2 1 14 4
2 1 1 13 4
2 1 1 6 4
3 2 1 -3 4
3 1 2 0 2
3 1 2 -5 2
3 1 2 -15 2
3 1 2 -22 2
3 1 2 -36 2
2 0 2 -56 2
3 0 3 -64 0
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