KEY POINTS:
Wrestling has raised its controversial head again before the World Cup.
And the Kiwis have been told by a leading Australian wrestler to raise their heads first, and the body will follow.
But while our finest Kiwis have been on the mat only to warm up for the tournament, Aussie wrestling experts would haul them into the sport fulltime if they could.
"If New Zealand and Australia could tap our footy players and get them into wrestling and judo, we'd be winning gold medals at the Olympics," Larry Papadopoulos tells the Herald from his central Sydney gym where the Kiwis trained.
"That's how good some of these guys are.
"But obviously there is no money in wrestling so our potential gold medallists go to union and league."
Papadopoulos, a former Aussie Greco-Roman champion and mixed martial arts trail blazer, trained Steve Kearney's Kiwis with help from a mate, Olympic wrestling coach Leonid Zaslavsky.
Claims that NRL players are using dangerous wrestling moves on the head and neck, known as grapple tackles, have been a major controversy for two seasons with Kearney's Melbourne club at the centre of this storm.
As with wrestling itself, it is a difficult topic to judge.
The Kiwi wrestling sessions were portrayed as secret by a Sydney tabloid, stirring the controversy.
Papadopoulos had invited the paper in to encourage sponsorship for a Zaslavsky charge, 14-year-old Jayden Lawrence, who is regarded as a brilliant Olympic prospect.
Lawrence's hero is the Kiwi standoff, "Bouncing" Benji Marshall.
Papadopoulos says: "I've only had three or four sessions with the Kiwis so it's not like I could impart a great amount of knowledge in that time.
"They were here for strength and conditioning and wrestling can be a core part of that. They only did 20 minutes of wrestling and of that, only two minutes where they actually wrestled each other at the end.
"I was annoyed with the coverage. It was supposed to be about this young kid but the paper ran away with the story. Nothing was secret."
But what part does wrestling play in league training and tactics?
Papadopoulos should know as he helps Parramatta and South Sydney. Zaslavsky has assisted them too, plus Cronulla, Canterbury and Newcastle.
Papadopoulos did impart one tip to a few of Kearney's Kiwis: a drill which helps tackled players rise quickly.
"It basically involves getting your head up first. It's a wrestling drill. It's about finding space for your head ... if you control the head, you control the body."
This is pivotal to the complaints about wrestling techniques, because critics say defenders target the head.
Papadopoulos says: "A lot of what we teach is about the finer points, like keeping the head in a tighter, stronger position. That makes contact more effective and also protects the defending player's neck.
"You don't just reach for the arms but also with your body and feet - as any footballer will tell you, if you just reach with the arms you'll miss.
"Coaches bring in people like me because I can add a few bits and pieces from wrestling. But when I do some things, coaches will say that's not appropriate.
"I've seen players from teams that I coach do grapple tackles but it is stuff they do on their own - in games these things happen. Forcing the neck or strangling and choking ... we don't do any of that stuff here.
"A lot of wrestling techniques simply aren't appropriate for league. And I look at someone like Nathan Hindmarsh - he just throws them around like they are nothing. Even though I do a lot of work with Parramatta, I do very little with Nathan because he is naturally that talented.
"People would be surprised. If they saw our sessions, they would go 'that's rugby league' not 'that's wrestling'. The coaches know all this stuff anyway. We are there for positive reinforcement." Yet photos of the Kiwis in action looked a lot like wrestling. Moving on ...
The Kiwi player Papadopoulos would treasure is little hooker Issac Luke, because of his explosiveness and power-to-weight ratio.
Some of the Papadopoulos observations about the Kiwis are not technique related. He senses a great spirit in the camp because of a comfortable camaraderie in gym combat.
Asked to nominate the best trainers, he names captain Nathan Cayless and battling veteran David Kidwell.
On the question of the best wrestlers, the Melbourne-trained Kidwell, Adam Blair and Jeremy Smith pop up.
"Blair drew a penalty against Tonga when he used something he'd done in wrestling to get up faster, which forced a guy to make a second effort in the tackle," he says.
"But I think Melbourne were picked on. There was posturing by coaches to unsettle them.
"A lot of teams employ questionable tactics but when you are at the top, everyone is trying to get at you.
"I don't expect wrestling to be controversial at the World Cup."
