NRL: Henjak joins ranks of hard-done coaches

Coach Ivan Henjak was bucked by the Broncos 18 days before the NRL season started. Photo / Getty Images

Even by the standards of soccer, where managers sink and swim on the mood of their jumpy owners, Ivan Henjak got a raw deal at league's Brisbane Broncos.

Henjak was this week bucked by the Broncos with indecent haste or almost comical slowness depending on how you look at it.

He should have been shown the door at the end of the 2010 season - the first time the Broncos didn't make the playoffs - if the Broncos deemed him not good enough.

Instead he got the boot in 2011 before his team completed a set of six.

The Broncos waited until 18 days before the start of the NRL season to dump Henjak, who had spent two years living in the shadow of former coach Wayne Bennett.

This just isn't the normal league way.

Now soccer, that's a different story. In soccer's defence, their leagues around the world are built on promotion-relegation systems so treating managers like pinch hitters isn't completely nuts, although plenty of owners are exactly that.

A culture of soccer sackings is so entrenched that bookmakers quote odds on the subject while the departed often get new jobs almost straight away on this mad merry-go-round. (Aussie Rules has just banned bets on which coach will be sacked first in a season)

For what it's worth, I don't think many league watchers believed Henjak was the man who would lead the Broncos to old heights.

There was something unspectacular about him for an outfit like the Broncos, and most significantly, he didn't have enough of the golden touch in attracting and/or keeping big stars at a major club.

Yet his win-loss record over two years was almost identical to that of Bennett's in his last two seasons in charge at the club.

Unfortunately for Henjak, the old Bennett magic has worked spectacularly at St George-Illawarra, which made the Broncos even more aware of how their club had slipped.

A review last year found players against Henjak, and only a supportive chairman stopped the board ousting him then.

The new chief executive Paul White - an old police mate of Bennett's - became the henchman.

Still, White had seven weeks in the CEO's chair before he axed Henjak, leaving the Broncos in potential turmoil going into the season.

The shadow of Bennett always looms over the Broncos, who will be coached by Henjak's old assistant Anthony Griffin. Rumours abound that this plot will lead to Bennett's return.

As strange sackings in our backyard go, Henjak's demise is a stunner to match the 2004 saga involving Brumbies rugby coach David Nucifora.

He had a reasonable two-year record by the Brumbies' then high standards.

Midway through the 2004 campaign Nucifora was told his services would not be required after that season.

His team duly won the title after the stoic Nucifora continued, in name only perhaps, to be the coach of prima donna players who, despite their denials, had trooped upstairs to force his departure.

The senior players realised their positions and incomes were in jeopardy as Nucifora signalled his intention to build for the future.

The Brumbies organisation signed its own death warrant in terms of winning titles though.

When veteran players are allowed to take over the shop, guided by self-interest, a sports club is likely doomed.

The former Fiji rugby captain and Waikato stalwart Greg Smith was ousted at Bay of Plenty on the eve of the 2009 NPC season, his first in charge.

A player uprising and another old chestnut - communication problems - were said to be the reasons, although a trawl through the archives fails to find any subsequent clarification.

The union's chief executive claimed Smith had "a great future" when he was appointed. Guess not, huh.

In the biggest waste of paper since Neville Chamberlain's infamous peace initiative, Smith's departure was accompanied by a press release claiming: "Bay of Plenty does not attribute responsibility to Greg Smith for this ... [he] displayed a high level of technical ability and professionalism in his role and in his relationship with the players."

Anyone smell a lawyer about? And sport wonders why the media can be cynical.

No other sport matches the blood-letting that goes on in soccer but other American college sports are still a rich hunting ground for bizarre pre-season dismissals.

One that sticks out occurred two years ago, when a New Jersey football coach named Roderick Moore was dumped for holding a supporter club cookout on the school campus without the principal's agreement.

"Most people think it was a bum move," said Mike Foster, the father of a McNair cheerleader. Bum moves? Cheerleaders?

And only in America does a cheerleader's parent get a starring role.

A New York school fired its girls' basketball coach, Brian Lavelle, after he was caught on a security camera appearing to steal money from a student's backpack.

A sporting tactician who doesn't think laterally enough to check for security cameras is unlikely to be the next Phil Jackson anyway.

And Kentucky football coach Fred Farrier was sacked just as the pre-season workouts began, supposedly because players were involved in the theft of a tip jar from a restaurant. Coaches always get the blame.

Italian soccer's contribution includes that of Serie A club Bologna, which fired coach Franco Colomba just before the season's opener against mighty Inter Milan last year.

One of Colomba's supposed crimes was a high number of pre-season injuries.

"They are all crazy here," Colomba was reported as saying on his departure, a statement that covers soccer in general.

Colomba had 13 coaching moves in 16 seasons, which sums up soccer.

Henjak's Broncos severance deal is said to include a gagging clause. The special circumstances around his departure mean his ruthless sacking may not signal a new mood in league boardrooms. Other coaches will be reminded that their jobs are always on the line in one way or other.