ONLY seven weeks ago, Canberra’s season all but written off after a 30-point loss at home to the Newcastle Knights, a Raiders player confided in the opposition’s super coach Wayne Bennett.
‘‘If they just settled the bloody coaching thing here it’d help us enormously,’’ Bennett said, paraphrasing the words of the unnamed Raider.
‘‘He said ‘all this stupid speculation going on ain’t helping nobody’.’’
‘‘It’s so true, it just destabilises your club,’’ Bennett summed up. ‘‘To [David Furner’s] credit he rode it out and that’s the fine line [of coaching].’’
Furner will tonight coach his 100th NRL match and is potentially two wins from an NRL grand final.
Two months ago his coaching career was declared all but dead.
Whether the challenge to Furner’s position from former premiership-winning teammate Ricky Stuart was ever genuine, Bennett’s comments above confirms one thing – the coaching uncertainty did unsettle the Raiders enormously.
Stuart’s appointment at the Parramatta Eels for next year has been followed by a seven-game winning run from the Raiders.
But for as long as Furner’s coaching career continues to run, he can expect to be challenged – sometimes weekly – by former Raiders teammates and mentors.
Tonight Furner battles fellow St Edmund’s College graduate Michael Maguire. On Maguire’s staff is assistant Wayne Collins, another former Raiders player and assistant coach, and Shaun Edwards, once Canberra’s strength and conditioning man.
The Raiders have had only seven coaches in their 31-season history. But former Raiders players or coaches have now been in charge of 10 other NRL clubs.
Next season alone, six of Canberra’s rival 15 NRL clubs will be headed by former Raiders players or coaches.
There’s Maguire at the Rabbitohs, Stuart at the Eels, Bennett at the Knights, Tim Sheens at Wests Tigers, Neil Henry at the North Queensland Cowboys and Craig Bellamy at the Melbourne Storm.
That’s not accounting for the representative trifecta, comprising Sheens for Australia, Mal Meninga for Queensland and Laurie Daley for NSW.
‘‘You’ve got to be proud,’’ Raiders chairman John McIntyre said. ‘‘The disappointing thing is that they’re all specialists in that one area and there’s only a place for one here.’’
McIntyre wears it as a badge of honour that the Raiders have never sacked a head coach. They went close, well before David Furner’s position was ever in question.
It was early in 1989 and members of the Raiders board, expecting immediate success after the club’s 1987 grand final appearance, were growing restless with their young appointment from Penrith, Sheens.
Some wanted Sheens dumped, but then-Raiders chairman and founder, Les McIntyre, resisted.
‘‘There was a discussion, but the faction didn’t have the numbers,’’ John McIntyre recalled.
Later that year Sheens led the Raiders to their first premiership. The Raiders made four grand finals in six years, winning three titles.
They haven’t made a grand final since, but the legacy of that era is now represented in the current coaching structures of the NRL.
Asked what would have become of that legacy had Sheens been axed in early 1989, McIntyre says: ‘‘You shudder at the thought.’’
Bennett isn’t so sure.
Bennett, named rugby league’s coach of the century, spent just one season at the Raiders. It was his first as a coach in the NSW Rugby League, in 1987.
Beside him was Don Furner senior, the man he credits for starting the revolution of future NRL coaches.
Furner was Canberra’s inaugural coach from 1982 and became the Australian coach in 1986.
‘‘I always craved to have someone who could influence me a bit ... my arrival in Canberra, Don just had so much knowledge, it was just a great relationship we both had with each other,’’ Bennett said.
‘‘It was the making of me because he gave me the confidence you needed at that level, critiqued me when I needed it and allowed me to coach when he knew I was on the right track. He had no ego, Don, he was wonderful that way. He just wanted that club to be successful.
‘‘Don had built that team over six years there, he retired, I left, and Tim [Sheens] came in at the right time and right place. We all made our contributions so it’s not about putting anyone down, but the point I’m making is Don had got a lot of the right people there with winning attitudes.
‘‘Their onward success had been built around that foundation Don had created.’’
Don Furner senior now has dementia. His long-term memories remain vivid, his short-term recollection is fading. But his legacy remains as strong as ever.
His son Don Furner junior is the Raiders’ chief executive. His other son, David, the club’s original ballboy, is now coach.
The family, always subject to claims of nepotism, don’t like to talk about it. It’s a shame, because it represents such a rich history of the club.
But in David Furner, Bennett sees the influence of his father. Bennett admires the job the 42-year-old has done, not just to survive this season, but to thrive.
‘‘He’s got pretty good breed in him, he’s just had a tough time of it, that’s all. It happens,’’ Bennett said.
‘‘You’ve got to understand with this coaching game, it’s such a fine line that we all walk. The fine line is either success or failure.
‘‘David was gone six or seven weeks ago, everybody recognised that. But if you asked him what he was doing differently eight weeks ago to what he’s done now he probably couldn’t even tell you because all of a sudden it just comes together and that’s the way it works. You don’t always know that exact moment.
‘‘They’ve had two years without [Terry] Campese. Unless you’re coaching there, no one would understand the impact of that.
‘‘Campese’s a talented player, but guys like that bring so much more than just talent. Dean Young was that for me at St George, Darren Lockyer [at Brisbane], Ben Hornby [at the Dragons], you can’t win without those guys playing in your team.
‘‘I remember once coaching [at the Broncos] and we lost Lockyer for six weeks, we didn’t win a game for six weeks. I still had Shane Webcke, Petero Civoniceva, Gorden Tallis, Tonie Carroll, Shaun Berrigan, Brent Tate, they were all still playing. We could not win a game.
‘‘We lost Kurt Gidley at the Knights this year and that was a huge impact on us. So for David the last two years with his absolute number one player playing bugger-all games for them, it’s had a huge impact on them.’’
While some Raiders fans have criticised McIntyre and the Raiders board for sitting on their hands and accepting mediocrity for too long, Bennett applauds the loyalty shown by Canberra.
‘‘That’s what they built that club on, loyalty,’’ Bennett said. ‘‘Super League really knocked that club around, but they’re getting back on top.
‘‘I remember Don would see a coach getting the sack and he’d say ‘Wayne do they realise that he’s a better coach now than what he was last year and now they’re going to sack him?’.
‘‘It’s so true. As coaches you do get better ... There are coaches who can’t get the job done too but it’s a case of recognising who can and who can’t. If you’ve got a coach there for 12 months and you sack him, the guys who’ve made the appointment should be sacking themselves because they’ve got it wrong.’’
Bennett, considered one of the best minds in rugby league, can’t explain why the Raiders have had such a dominant influence on current coaching.
His best guess is that it was the ‘‘quality of people’’ and culture created in those early days.
‘‘Canberra’s a great place to live and it’s a pressure-free environment compared to living in Sydney. It’s a one-team town. Those things are important. More importantly they’ve come into a system that’s had a pretty strong culture and a lot of quality people involved in it, and that rubs off.’’