Phil Gould has attacked the NRL’s bottom-placed teams after a dismal effort from the Wests Tigers added to a spate of floggings in the games on Friday and Saturday.
Speaking on Nine’s NRL coverage after the Roosters’ 66-point victory over the Tigers, Gould lashed the “deplorable” defence and commitment shown by the league’s bottom eight sides, with four matches so far this round having margins over 34 points.
“It was terrible. I mean it’s terrible from the Tigers, it’s terrible from half the competition,” he said post-match.
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“It just shows where our competition is at the moment and where some of the bottom teams are, and they just can’t compete when these top teams get it right.
“You get scorelines like this late in the season where one team has something to play for and the other team has nothing to play for. Although, I can’t see why a professional footballer or a professional football team doesn’t always have something to play for. I mean the Wests Tigers are back there at the tail of the field, you want something for your fans to come out of this and show a little pride and resilience, and the same goes for the other teams.
“But you can’t give up at this end of the season and allow teams to run roughshod over you like that.”
With the competition set to expand with the Dolphins entering next year, Gould said the solution was not to regress the number of teams but to grow the league’s player pool by investing in junior talent.
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“We’ve got 16 teams this year with 30 NRL players – they’ve all got a top 30. Next year, the Dolphins get 30 new players and everyone else has got less. There’s nothing new coming through yet, we’ve had two years of COVID-19, two years with lack of development – those kids aren’t ready for NRL football,” he said.
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“This is where our competition is at the moment, there’s a real recovery period here and until we invest, every club invests in developmental, until the game invests in development and until we invest and look at what’s available to us in the Pacific Islands and New Zealand and try to increase our player pool and take ownership of that, which the NRL has failed to do for a long time. Then it’s gonna be a long road out of this.
“The excuse is COVID-19, [young talent] hasn’t played for a couple of years because of COVID-19. COVID-19 has exposed this, COVID didn’t cause this, it’s exposed it.
“Whether that fixes the Tigers getting beaten 72-6, I don’t know, but this game is a house of cards at the moment, unfortunately, and the NRL needs to really get active on how it invests in development and the strength of our clubs.”
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