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“The NRL club which wins the 2022 premiership won’t be the one with the best team. It will be the one with the best squad.”

That’s the message coaches have been delivering to their charges during the past month, particularly to fringe players, as pre-season training groups are expanded.

Cronulla Sharks recruit Nicho Hynes could be one of this season’s most valuable players due to his versatility.Credit:NRL Photos

COVID-19 could prove both a curse and an opportunity as development players fill the positions of regulars stood down following positive tests.

An NRL team could lose four or five players on the eve of a match, frustrating fans, broadcasters and bookies but for coaches the pandemic is only part of their challenge.

Up to one third of most clubs’ top 30 players have probably played an average of only five games the past two years. The cancellation of the NSW and Queensland State Cup competitions in 2020, together with the abandonment of the NSW Cup from June last year means as many as 10 players in each NRL club’s top squad have limited recent playing experience.

So, with COVID-19 potentially robbing a team of its spine on the eve of a match and replacement players being inexperienced, 2022 could be even more disruptive than the previous two years.

The development players recently promoted to an NRL club’s top 30 have not only missed games, they have had limited association with the senior squad.

Former New Orleans Saints NFL coach Sean Payton.Credit:AP

The sight of four young Rabbitohs training on their own at Redfern Oval during grand final week was a harbinger of the problem ahead.

South Sydney’s top 30 players had been in Queensland for some time and the NSW Cup competition had been suspended in late June, meaning the quartet of young Rabbitohs had not only missed games but contact with the NRL squad.

And how much skill enhancement can be achieved by a group of four training alone?

Because Queensland was less disrupted by COVID-19, its state cup competition played on, meaning its three NRL teams, together with the Melbourne Storm, will have more back-up players with game experience than the NSW clubs.

The experienced coaches, such as Penrith’s Ivan Cleary, Melbourne’s Craig Bellamy, Manly’s Des Hasler and Canberra’s Ricky Stuart, have overseen enough good teams to understand what works and struggled with enough bad ones to understand what doesn’t.

But what happens if these guys go down with COVID-19?

A Storm statistic on COVID-19 is telling. In a six-week period from early December, 35 Melbourne players tested positive and missed training. Yet only one football department staff member returned a positive swab.

OK, the players might have been out nightclubbing, while the staff members may have retired at 9pm with a glass of hot milk and an Arrowroot biscuit, emulating the Mark 1 lifestyle of the Skinny Coach.

However, when the 2022 season starts and staffers inevitably mix with media, sponsors and fans, a club could lose its head coach and all his assistants.

NRL clubs are committed to an Apollo bubble but one Sydney club has already had its head coach test positive and miss 10 days of training, while other senior figures with multiple roles live outside the bubble.

The NFL has its COVID protocols but it didn’t stop pre-match chaos, with the New Orleans Saints forced to activate 15 players from their reserve list for a January game. Sean Payton – the longest-serving and most successful coach in the franchise’s history – resigned after 16 years at the club at the end of the season. One of the reasons he gave was the burn-out which had been increased by the impact of the pandemic.

Coaches love control, yet “uncertainty” is the word they use when asked to sum up the forthcoming season.

They won’t tolerate idiot players. Any player who threatens to disrupt an already fragile team ethos will be dispatched, posing a problem if he is deliberately destabilising the club in order to be released.

When COVID-19 robs a team of key players on match eve, the versatile ones, such as Nicho Hynes and Connor Watson will be valuable.

A successful football team is a carefully constructed assembly of a couple of highly respected guys nearing retirement, a nucleus of young veterans who have played 100 first-grade games and a group of young players on the rise.

This last group will expand even more in size as the Dolphins draw another 30 players out of an already shallow talent pool, compounding the challenges of coaches as they fast track rookies.

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