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Message: [QUOTE="1910, post: 2649129, member: 8272"] [B]BOB Simpson is regarded by some as the greatest cricket coach of all time yet I’m not sure he would have lasted a season coaching the current Queensland Bulls. [/B] Simmo’s decorated senior coaching career is long gone but let’s just pretend for a minute he was turning 49 tomorrow instead of 79 and keen on taking over from sacked Bulls-Heat coach Stuart Law. You could just see how the summer would pan out. Simmo bounces in, full of energy, and as always becomes the burr on the players’ saddle. The man who once called Andrew Flintoff “a fat c---” – something Flintoff later thanked him for — immediately tells some players they are unfit. Others are told they need to broaden their game, some that they don’t catch properly and a few more are force-fed the chastening news they simply don’t work hard enough. As the weeks tick away the players start to bag Simmo on those communal phone apps they use to talk to each other in privacy. The old b@astard’s too tough. He’s out of date. He bags me all the time. The whinges flow like a country stream after a thunder storm. Then finally Simmo faces the board and, just like Trevor Barsby a few years back and Law last Friday, is told that he has “lost’’ the players and they are not coming back. The end. Players 3. Coaches 0. It’s a big win for the players but a shallow one as well. Law had his faults as a coach but one thing that must never be forgotten is that one direction he was given by his employers was to toughen up the playing group. He had a mandate to go hard but going hard cost him in the end. Like a lot of players raised in the hard-nosed 80s and 90s Law had difficulty adjusting to players raised in a less abrasive era. But if there is one pattern of modern sport that consistently rings true it is that players who blame coaches for the failings rarely go anywhere which is why we should have limited expectations of the current bunch of Queensland players. Tough teams look inward not outward. In the 35 year history of the State of Origin series have you ever heard of any player coups against a coach? Some coaches worked better than others but when the Origin team loses the players generally just blame themselves. Often the great champions, like Allan Langer and Johnathan Thurston, blame themselves too much. When news of Law’s sacking filtered through the first person I thought of, oddly enough, was the former Australian quick Jason Gillespie. After Australia lost the 2005 Ashes series in England Australia launched an inquiry into the effort and a string of players blamed everything from the coach (John Buchanan) to poor scheduling and even wives on tour. Yet Gillespie, who had a career-low form slump on tour, blamed no-one but himself. He told interviewers that he simply had a shocker and could not explain why but it was no-one else’s fault. That is the type of character he is, a man who looks himself sternly in the eye. It’s called being a team player and they are becoming increasing rare beasts. [/QUOTE]

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