The Logies on the weekend was a reminder that the awards season is upon us. The postponement of the Emmys due to the Hollywood actors’ and writers’ strike was a warning that the Dally M’s could suffer the same fate, with players and the RL Commission seemingly unable to reach agreement on their various roadblocks.
The player’s refusal to do pre-match interviews for Origin III and their crude but rather effective cover-up of the NRL logo on their jerseys with sticking plaster on the weekend were just the start of their rolling protests. The game’s ‘Night of Nights’ is an obvious target with a boycott very much on the cards which would be a real shame because surely the Broncos’ Kevin Walters is now very much in the running to be Dally M Coach of the Year.
I’d go so far as to say he’s favourite, which is something I never thought I’d say, especially after the rocky start Kevvie had to his coaching career. In 2020 the Broncos finished 14th with just seven wins. Last year they improved to ninth spot but it wasn’t their 13 wins they will be remembered for, it was the five losses in their last six games, a stunning implosion that saw them go from certain finalists to out of the eight.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Kevvie then had to put up with the humiliation of his prize rookie Selwyn Cobbo telling a podcast interviewer in the pre-season that he couldn’t coach. The then-20-year-old with all the experience of 25 NRL games under his belt said that Walters was ‘not the best coach but he’s alright. He’s a good person, a good bloke and does a lot for the club, but the way he coaches is a bit weird, I guess.’
Given that Kevvie’s ‘weird’ coaching has seen the Broncos sit at the top or thereabouts of the NRL ladder for the entire season and helped Cobbo earn Origin selection, you’d have to guess he has changed his opinion somewhat over the past six months or so, but there are those who still won’t give Walters credit for the team’s turnaround.
To hear them talk, it is not Kevvie who coaches the side at all, but in fact Broncos’ captain Adam Reynolds. Obviously Reynolds does have an enormous influence on the team. As Kevin has said several times in media conferences this season, ‘that’s why we bought him’, and let’s not forget who it was who went to Reynolds’s home in Sydney, sat down in his loungeroom and convinced him to make to move to Brisbane. Kevin Walters of course.
As a man who played 237 games in the halves for the Broncos, winning five premierships for the club along the way - including one as captain - he knew exactly the kind of leadership that was needed to guide the club back from the ignominy of the wooden spoon under Anthony Seibold in 2020 to the glory days of the 1980s and 90s. Maybe he does let Reynolds have a major say in the way things are done but to my mind that isn’t a sign of weak, or even weird coaching.
I think it’s smart. So smart, in fact, that it should earn him the Coach of the Year award at this year’s Dally M’s. If they go ahead, that is.