Quote Wires71="Wires71"Cullen never, ever, addressed this. He said in a 2002 ST meeting "If you think it's bad now [drinking culture you should have seen it in the 80's"*. I knew then he was too close to the players and going about it all wrong. I also said he was coaching at the biggest club he ever would. Sadly true. Still I'll remember him now as a legend centre/SR rather than an "Emperors Clothes" coach.
*He also said "Warren Stevens was the best player in the lower leagues by a mile" hence the signing.'"
The odd thing with this is Cullen was not a weak character. He was not afraid to lay down the law with other people at the club, media etc. But he did not enforce strict discipline on the players in the way that Tony Smith has done.
I suspect it all comes down to respect and the power balance between a coach and his players, which is always there, unspoken or not. Jack Gibson said the most important thing a coach could have is respect, but it is either there or it isn't, and if it isn't there is no way you can command respect just by coming over as tough.
Our better players like Gleeson and Briers, had more power than Cullen and they knew it, if he had tried to bring in a regime they hadn't accepted he would have had no chance, he would have 'lost the dressing room'. So he had to keep them onside. Tony Smith came in with two Super League titles and a World Club Challenge on his CV so he had power and respect from the start and this gave him licence to create a harsher regime and have it accepted by the players.
This sort of situation happens a lot in football. You hear about managers that are ousted by player power because the players don't agree with their methods. Andre Villas Boas was a classic example at Chelsea, all the senior players came out against him, they didn't like his strict training methods etc. But Jose Mourinho had them training ruthlessly hard and they accepted it from him. The difference was Mourinho had the Champions League on his CV with Porto, whereas AVB was the same age as his senior players, had never played professional football, and they had seen him as a junior a few years back when he was one of Jose's research assistants. Jose can make players do things that AVB can't, in the same way that at City Mancini can make players do things that Mark Hughes couldn't.
Interestingly even Brian Smith has fallen foul of this in recent years. Like Tony he is well known for being a disciplinarian but whereas in the early part of his career he was regarded as a coaching guru, the lack of a Grand Final win has damaged him and when he takes over a club you hear senior players grumble (made worse by the fact the press actively go hunting for it) because they don't like his strictness and without a Grand Final win on his CV maybe he isn't big enough to hold that respect over guys like Jamie Lyon and Andrew Johns.
The one coach that had the power to come in to his first job and rule with an iron fist without having achieved anything in coaching before was Ellery Hanley at Saints. But that's because it's Ellery Hanley.
