Footy doesn't restart for everyone this weekend.
The hard, pre-season style training stops. Games begin for the best 17 at each club.
But the other players - 208 of them, if you count the remainder of each top-30 across 16 clubs - will have nothing this weekend. Many of them won't play a game all year.
That's the reality without the second-tier competitions. It's going to be very tough on those guys.
The last 10 players on the roster, the guys who aren't in contention to play NRL unless there are injuries, are just going to be smashing each other through the week to try and stay fit and match-ready.
It's going to wear thin on a few of them pretty quickly.
It's all well and good belting each other throughout a normal pre-season, knowing that there's a game around the corner. But now, those squad players who aren't a genuine chance of playing first grade don't have that to look forward to.
And soon, they'll be in scrimmages against guys who are playing every week and have NRL-standard match fitness. It's going to be really hard. It will wear thin physically, but even more so mentally.
The other problem is, these aren't the guys on big money. They will be doing all this, while living to the new and extreme biosecurity standards, for NRL minimum wage.
I'd love for those guys to get a game somewhere, but don't see how it will be feasible given what it took just to get the NRL back into action.
NEW BALL GAME JUGGLING ROSTERS
I remember really taking notice of what Trent Robinson did at the Roosters last year, starting around this time of the season when Origin was on.
Boyd Cordner and James Tedesco weren't backing up after games for NSW. If they had a little niggling injury, they took two weeks' break.
Cooper Cronk also had games off. Luke Keary took longer than totally necessary to come back from a concussion.
I thought to myself, 'He's doing this on purpose to keep them fresh for the back end of the year.'
The Roosters had great depth, so they could rest players and keep winning games. Sure enough, they became the first back-to-back premiers of the NRL era.
I remember asking Robbo about it on grand final day. He confirmed that he'd strategically rested guys, likening it to a tank of petrol.
Players aren't robots. They can't perform the same way every single week; you just want them as close to their best as possible.
He said to me after the grand final that his team just had enough petrol left in the tank. It was perfectly planned and executed, right to the final day of the season.
But what does this season's petrol tank look like?
As we saw with Robbo last year, the coach who does the best job of working that out will likely be the one who leads his team to the premiership.
All the plans made by coaches across the NRL have been thrown out the window. We're now playing 18 weeks straight, then finals.
The positive is that they won't have the disruption of rep weekend and the State of Origin series. The difficulty is non-stop football.
This is where depth is so important. If players No.19-22 are guys who can easily handle first grade, maybe you can rest players if you're winning.
But if you're losing games, you just need to put your best 17 on the field every week. If injuries creep in, things become even harder.
I remember when our Cronulla side won the comp in 2016, we won 16 weeks straight and hardly changed a player. We used 22 players all season, even with several Origin players in the team.
That shows you that it's possible for most players to get through the 18 weeks straight this season, if clubs mostly stick to picking their best side. The old rule - if it ain't broke, don't fix it - will still apply.
Generally the team that wins the premiership doesn't use too many players. Perhaps that will look slightly different this season.
Broncos coach Anthony Seibold has said he's looking at using a rotation system. He's an innovative coach who likes to try new things, but I'm not quite sure how that will look; injuries and suspensions could throw it out of whack pretty quickly.
A club like Brisbane is one of the few that might pull it off. They have plenty of depth, when you consider that guys like Tom Flegler and Joe Ofahengaue could be coming off the bench from their forward pack, and perhaps Matt Lodge can return early from injury.
Not every club can just rotate players in and out, leaving out first graders when they're fit enough to play. Not when the guys below them in the squad aren't genuine NRL standard and you need to keep winning.
Look at the Sharks. Having lost myself and Matt Prior after last season, should we lose an Andrew Fifita or a Wade Graham to injury this season, the depth in the forwards may start to get a bit thin. You could be replacing Test-standard players with NRL debutants, who aren't even getting a game in reserve grade this year.
One thing that may happen is that we see bench players getting more time on the field. Rather than a starting middle forward playing 60 minutes, perhaps that's reduced and the bench guys start playing more than the usual 20-30 minutes. They may play 40 minutes each.
Often that fourth reserve, the utility player, may only get 10 or 15 minutes. Perhaps we now see that player getting half a game playing as an edge back-rower.
As I've said before, whoever wins this competition will certainly have earned it. This season will be very different, but it many ways it has only gotten tougher.
from WWOS http://wwos.nine.com.au/nrl/paul-gallen-column-fringe-players-coaches-season-restart/1cacdbc8-46d9-48e0-b98c-89945dd093e9
0 Comments