There are coaches in every sport who are known for having a short shelf life at any team they represent due to their system – and Michael Maguire may be one of them, Penrith great Mark Geyer fears.
Maguire has not been short of criticism about his coaching style over the years, with his infamous pre-season army camps and training programs often put under the spotlight.
While it is inevitable that not everyone will be the best of friends in any sporting club, systems like Maguire’s have proven to divide opinion both internally and externally.
The 52-year-old served his longest tenure as head coach at the Rabbitohs, holding the top job for six years before departing to Wests Tigers.
A three-and-a-half-year stay at the Tigers was followed by a short stint with the New Zealand Kiwis, a season with the New South Wales Blues and now the Broncos.
His training methods caused unrest among the playing group at his first pre-season at the Broncos.
The unrest did not last long, though, with the group eventually uniting to again prove that if Maguire’s systems are followed by all that a premiership can be won.
Still, talk of disgruntledness at Brisbane is not going away.
“What I do keep hearing a lot is Madge’s name being mentioned … I’m not gonna say [in] unfriendly [ways], but not in positive ways,” Geyer said on 2GB’s The Continuous Call Team.
“That makes me think that someone like Michael Maguire has a shelf life as a coach in the NRL of around three years, because he is so intense. Then it is time for him to take his powers and move on somewhere else that needs his help.
Geyer added: “But I think he will always be a first-grade coach.
“Look what he did with Origin. The way he came around to every ex-Origin player and coach, sat us down for a coffee individually … I was lucky to be one of them. He had this plastic bag with him, and right at the end of our chat he tipped out this blue Origin jersey and said, ‘I want to know what your thoughts are of it’.
“Straight away, I knew he was going to win Origin because he just got it.
“You don’t have to coach people; you have to inspire them. And he inspires the Broncos.
“But I think sometimes the red line that he keeps revving at might be detrimental.”
2GB’s Mark Levy admitted he was unsure how much more Maguire had to do to prove his training credentials were valuable to both players and the general public given how much success he’d had.
But former Bulldogs star Josh Morris noted it would only take a handful of losses to change the narrative around Maguire’s system – or any coach’s processes for that matter.
“When they were going well, no one was talking about it, but as soon as they started losing that’s when the murmurs started coming out that the players were unhappy with his hard training methods,” Morris said.
“But how do you think they got back into that winning position? They didn’t do it by training lightly. If you want to be a successful team you have to drive high standards.
“They will probably train harder in this season than they did in the last because now they are the hunted. They didn’t have the pressure of being the premiership winners (before).
“They were always the premiership hopefuls but never threats. Now they are that.”
Geyer and Cronulla great Paul Gallen both admitted they would have “loved” to be coached by Maguire due to his high-intensity ways.
However, the pair conceded external noise around his systems would not help him in the long run if his job was to be put on the line.
“I can only imagine that there are players there who don’t get on well with him and might not like the hard training, so they have a whinge every now and then,” Gallen said.
“When things are not going right, someone is going to bring it out (to the public).”
Geyer added: “He has got to get rid of them players that keep saying things about him.”
Former NRL cult hero Mark Riddell then said: “At the end of the day, if you put his record down and then put all the other NRL coaches’ records down, he is one of the best in the game.”
The Broncos will kick off their premiership defence at home against the Panthers next Friday.
