If you're going to live in a glass house, you shouldn't throw stones," warned Storm coach Craig Bellamy at the height of the latest grapple tackle controversy to engulf the NRL this week - before proceeding to lob a few rocks in the direction of the Broncos and the Eels.
"I'm sure they're as guilty of being as much around the neck and head as we are," Bellamy told a press conference in Melbourne after deciding on Wednesday that it was time to enter the wrestling ring, pointing fingers about game's obsessive use of wrestling and martial arts techniques to dominate the tackle.
Bellamy was even more specific in his finger-pointing during a recent interview with The Herald on wrestling, saying: "You can put it all down to Wayne [Bennett]."
Bennett may be the most outspoken critic of the wrestling phenomenon to have taken hold in the game of late, but it was under his watch at Brisbane where Bellamy says the trend originated.
And Bellamy should know, as he was assistant coach in 1998 when the Broncos employed Chris "The Hammer" Haseman, a combatant in mixed martial arts. Bellamy said Bennett signed the cheques and was supportive of the move to hire a wrestling coach.
"I was looking for one and told Wayne. Chris was working at the Police Academy and that's how I found him, through Wayne. He was the one who gave me Chris's name," Bellamy said.
Penrith captain Luke Priddis gave credence to Bellamy's view of how the NRL evolved into Wrestlemania when he said this week that he had learnt wrestling techniques while playing for the Broncos between 1999 and 2001.
"It was probably something that I learnt up in Brisbane, to be honest, but it wasn't so much twisting and trying to rip the head off, it was just a small turning of the neck to be in a position where you couldn't move," Priddis told Channel Seven.
However, Bennett has previously denied the claims. Last month he said: "We never talk about the grapple, we never practise it here, it's never been a part of our club here. But you see the teams that continuously do it. I could name the players. Every coach in the competition could name the players for you that continually grapple."
Haseman, who attained guru-like status among Broncos hard men Gorden Tallis and Shane Webcke and went on to work for the Australian Rugby Union, backed Bennett.
"Wayne, in my view, is a real rugby league purist so, to be quite honest, I had to convince Wayne on a weekly basis this is what we need," he said. "Bellamy is what you could say a new-age coach and he was really my supporter there."
If Haseman, now training Iraqi police, was The Man, he bequeathed the title to John Donehue when he provided the introduction Bellamy needed for a wrestling coach in Melbourne after taking charge of the Storm in 2003.
Wrestling coaches rave about Donehue; NRL coaches fear his power and techniques. And Bellamy won't let him speak to the media. "He's been painted as Darth Vader at some stage … he's a very gentle man who's very good at what he does."
Says Milton Dymock, Jim's brother and Cronulla's wrestling coach: "Chris started it off but the highly decorated one is John Donehue."
Donehue is also the man who brought the grapple tackle to the game, a point made by Larry Papadopoulos, wrestling coach to Souths and Parramatta and a former student of Donehue's.
"It was actually John [Donehue] throwing in a lot of these neck cranks and strangles that started to get noticed," Papadopoulos said. "That was when the shit hit the fan, when you had Melbourne screwing guys' necks up.
"We all know them but we don't use them because they're not legal in wrestling. But you can do all that kind of stuff in ju jitsu."
Parramatta coach Michael Hagan acknowledged the role of Papadopoulos, but defended his influence.
"The subtle difference in how they're used is that Larry has been informed that he's not to come into contact with the head or neck in any of the drills that we do," Hagan said. "The wrestle's effective component is one of slowing the ruck down and I guess that's the intent in most cases, if not all."
But after referee Sean Hampstead last weekend awarded five penalties in the Broncos-Storm match for grapple tackles and the match review committee detected Melbourne prop Jeff Lima using a new manoeuvre, dubbed the crusher, in which tacklers apply their body weight on the back of the ball carriers, people are beginning to question how the game got to this and what can be done about it.
"There's a difference between just hanging on to a bloke and some of the tackles that you saw on the weekend in that Brisbane-Melbourne game, where you could actually see the bloke was under pressure with his head being twisted and turned," Priddis said. "You talk to any player and you know the difference between someone just hanging on, trying to slow you down and having your head twisted and pulled sideways."
The use of wrestling coaches to teach tackling techniques is nothing new, but their influence has increased over the past decade in correspondence with the speed of the play-the-ball.
Many people believe the blame for that goes back to Super League and the introduction by the breakaway competition in 1997 of unlimited interchange. Teams were using up to 36 interchanges per match.
In contrast, the ARL had a limit of six interchanges but when the two competitions merged the unlimited rule was implemented for the first two seasons, won by Super League champions Brisbane and Melbourne, formed in 1998 mainly from former Super League players.
Submitting in tackles became the trend and to counter that defenders were coached to "waltz" with the ball-carrier in a bid to prevent a quick play-the-ball and enable their teammates to get back the 10 metres.
Over time that has evolved into "the battle on the ground", but it is now commonly accepted that things have gone too far and NRL chief executive David Gallop this week flagged a review of wrestling in the game at the end-of-season conference of clubs.
"Maybe there will come a time when you never hear the term wrestling, it will just be football," Haseman said.
Bennett would probably like that.
Media Man Australia Profiles
NRL
Wrestling
Australian Sports Entertainment
