Talent Is Not Enough by Danny Buderus

Author:Danny Buderus
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Australia
Published: 2009-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

I PUT myself slap bang in the middle of a media controversy in August 2007 over the massive clean-out at the Knights. I didn’t know who to turn to during that period and probably turned to a wrong person in the circumstances when I opened up to Barry Toohey, the Daily Telegraph’s well respected Newcastle based league reporter, and a bloke I regard as a mate. The resulting article put me into massive conflict with coach Brian Smith, brought to a head the issue of the manner in which the playing roster was being carved up … and ultimately led to my realisation that it was time for me to make plans to leave the Newcastle Knights.

In hindsight, I regret airing my views via the newspapers and the hell it put me, and the club, through. I hate conflict, and I dived right into a storm of conflict. I should have taken my concerns directly to Brian. But I won’t deny that my comments reflected exactly how I felt.

My comments were in no way personal towards Brian or anyone in particular; they were more about the process used to rip apart the club without adequate communication with the players. But Brian seemed to take them personally and hit back with what I felt was a very personal attack on me and my right to have my view, and I found that very disappointing. We had our say in a good heart-to-heart phone conversation a few days later, something I wish we’d had before anything came out in the media, but I have to be honest and say our relationship was purely ‘business only’ after that.

Here is what happened that week.

Barry Toohey, who has been the Tele’s league reporter since before I came to the Knights in the mid-1990s and is respected by the players, called me just as the Kirk Reynoldson dramas were starting to boil over. A few players had already confided in Barry before he spoke to me. No one at the club could deny that the morale among the players was the lowest I’d ever experienced during my 11 years in first grade, and Barry knew full well what was going down and how many players were pissed off.

I was pretty candid about what was happening; I made the main points that the players just wanted to know where they stood, that we wanted some clear explanation from the club on what they wanted and that there just hadn’t been enough communication. I said I didn’t know where the club was heading, we were getting no support, the rest of the season (there were four games left) seemed a waste of time and it wasn’t a happy place to be. I did say that the ordeal with Reyno was the last straw as far as low morale was concerned.

The problem was that, knowing Barry so well, I thought we were just having a chat and I was getting some things off my chest; I didn’t stop to think he’d quote me so strongly for the story.

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