North Queensland Cowboys coach Todd Payten’s journey into the pressure cooker of coaching

Football coaches tend to fit the three categories former British Labour Cabinet Minister, Tony Benn, once ascribed to politicians: straight guys, fixers and maddies.

Benn did not live to see the presidency of Donald Trump, who is a mix – a maddie who thinks he is a fixer.

Similarly, most NRL coaches like to see themselves as straight guys, but the long-term ones, with nurtured media and headquarters contacts, can become adroit fixers.

Souths coach Wayne Bennett is described by John Ribot, his former boss at the Broncos, as “the best politician in Australia”.

North Queensland Cowboys coach, Todd Payten, is a 180-degree straight guy. One incident defines him as the opposite of the fixer.

It was a 2020 interview on Fox Sports where he revealed he had been offered the position as head coach of the Warriors but rejected it, hoping to secure a job back in Australia.

Insofar as Payten was then an assistant to Steve Kearney, who had just been sacked, and it was only June, and he had already been appointed interim first grade coach, it intrigued coach watchers.

Most coaches would have obfuscated, uttered ultimately meaningless commitments to the players, the club and the board. In other words, acted like a politician. It was the middle of the COVID bubble, and Payten now reveals what really happened.

“I did a pre-record for 360 with Ikin and Kent, about 15 minutes before it went to air. They asked me what I could bring to the Warriors and I spoke bullshit,” Payten said.

“The interview didn’t sit well with me. I thought, ‘Shit, I’ve straight out lied.’ I had a sick feeling in the gut. So I called them back and did the interview live, telling the truth. I had rejected the Warriors job and I didn’t have things sorted at home in Australia. I had been promised an interview for the Cowboys top job, but it was just an interview. ”

Three months later Payten was announced as the Cowboys head coach on a three-year deal, beginning 2021. So, he was back in Townsville where he had joined the late Paul Green as an assistant in 2015, after three years on the coaching staff at Wests Tigers where he played 151 top-grade games, including the 2005 grand final win over the Cowboys.

The evidence of his career as a straight guy in Townsville indicates he has, as he says, “ripped the band-aid off and told the truth to the players.”

He stripped Jason Taumalolo of the captaincy shortly after the big lock had been given a 10-year contract and also benched him. He released Valentine Holmes, Chad Townsend and 2015 grand final hero Kyle Feldt at the end of last season and dropped Queensland Origin player Jeremiah Nanai after one game this year.

Asked if he sees himself as a straight guy, Payten says, “I’m pretty much straight down the line. I like to keep it honest, keep the feedback continuous. I like to be open, truthful. But I try to massage the message and I haven’t always got it right.”

He doesn’t blow smoke up a talented player’s tailpipe, nor play on a footballer’s insecurity like a fiddle. Nor is he a caffeinated coach, of the maddie type.

Following a round five win over the Panthers, he told a press conference, “I mightn’t seem it, but I am ecstatic.”

He told me, “I like to remain calm and level-headed. I’m not overly emotional. I wouldn’t like my personality to contribute to a loss, and I’m aware that my energy in the dressing room is contagious, meaning the players can take it aboard, so I try to keep it steady.”

Again, he makes the confession: “Sometimes I haven’t got it right.”

The perception of Payten as a straight guy is at odds with a burr from his past.

A rumour has circulated for over a decade that he undermined head coach Michael Potter at Wests Tigers when he was an assistant.

Unfortunately for Payten, an unfounded rumour in rugby league is not one that is easily lost. It is not unusual in professional football clubs for an assistant to white ant the top guy but it was more common in rugby league’s three-grade era, where lower grade coaches coveted the top job.

“It is incorrect,” Payten says, admitting the Potter story has plagued him his entire career. “It is absolute bullshit. My reputation took a hit. That part of my life is over. I haven’t said anything publicly previously, and I’ve got no further comment.”

Potter described Wests Tigers at the time as “a political hotbed.” Because Payten switched straight from playing at Wests Tigers to an assistant coach’s role, he became inextricably linked with the dissension of senior players disenchanted with Potter.

Like the 1960s US sitcom, Peyton Place, it was a drama of hypocrisy and rumour, but not Payten’s place to solve it.

The white ant label followed him, but Kearney, replaced mid-season by Payten in 2020, says, “I didn’t get any sense of Toddy undermining. We all bunkered down in our bubble and tried to look after each other.”

One question many NRL head coaches refuse to answer on the record for fear of upsetting the administration is whether the skill level of players has deteriorated. The NRL has spent record sums on development, but some coaches concede the skill of the new ones joining a club’s top roster of 30 is not as proficient as those a decade ago.

Payten is in an ideal situation to answer in that he joined the Cowboys as an assistant in 2015.

“We won the comp ten years ago,” he says with a rare chuckle, meaning a comparison with his current squad is unfair.

Defence doesn’t get taught well enough below NRL level

Todd Payten

While he lauds the stellar passing skills of those now coming to the top grade, he points out attack is only one half of the game.

“Defence doesn’t get taught well enough below NRL level,” he says. “How to move, step into the contest, fullbacks getting the numbers right from the back. With defence, you’re starting at ground zero.”

A product of the Riverina town of Temora, which has produced Trent Barrett, Zac Lomax, Liam Martin and Ryan Hinchcliffe, he also concedes rugby league is losing the numbers game to AFL. Ask the grandfather of these players what was the code differential back in their playing days and they say rugby league had a 90 per cent share of the talent.

“The last 10-15 years, it has been 50:50,” says Payten.

Nor does he believe the NRL gives sufficient consideration to the long-distance travelling clubs, the non-prime-time ones.

“They’ve got to make smarter decisions about kick-off times in the first six weeks, nothing before 7.30pm,” Payten said, ahead of the Cowboys match against Souths in Perth.

“We’ve already had two kick-offs at 4.30pm and the conditions have been horrendous for the players.”

But he reserves most criticism for himself, saying of the Cowboys 0-3 start to the season where the lazy pundits already had him on death watch, admitting, “I under-estimated the impact of the changes in personnel with new halves, new wingers, new back-rowers.”

The Cowboys are now 3-3.

Aged 46, Payten has been slowly moving up the NRL’s food chain from player to assistant to head coach, with top tenures at Auckland and Townsville.

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Perhaps his years in the NRL’s outback reinforced in him the solitude of command because there is a hint in his comments of the loneliness of the long-distance coach.

Payten points out he has had no continuing mentor, no membership of coach combines, although he has had some gifted assistants, such as Dean Young, who is now back with the Dragons.

“I haven’t attached myself to anyone in the game,” he volunteers. “I’ve had to work hard to get where I’ve got.”

But he aspires to being a lifer, saying, “It’s a privilege to be a head coach, although I understand how fickle the game can be.”

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