When 'Sterlo' talks, league players should listen.
A four-time premiership winner in the 1980's with the dominant Parramatta Eels and veteran of 18 tests for Australia, Peter Sterling has carved out a solid niche in rugby league broadcasting since the early 1990's on both television and radio.
Normally, Sterling's analysis matches the way he played the game - delivering coolly and quickly, nearly always bang on the mark.
That is why Sterlo's emotional rants are fewer and farther between than some of his contemporaries - and therefore they stick in the memory longer.
In the late 1990's, Sterling was a vocal critic of the unlimited interchange rule which allowed teams to sub players on and off with impunity, and so today the factor of player endurance was able to do just that - endure - as legal numbers of interchange were reduced from 10 to eight for the 2016 season.
And on Monday night, while offering commentary for the Triple M radio station on the Eels' 30-18 win over the Dragons, Sterling's torch was lit when Parramatta centre Brad Takairangi performed one manoeuvre which looks great on the highlight reels but is a horrible example for all the youngsters who will attempt to emulate it on Saturday mornings - the no-look pass.
In this case, Takairangi's attempted sleight of hand to his winger Michael Gordon was pulled up for going forward, killing the Eels attack and gifting the Dragons a chance to flip the momentum with a fresh set of tackles in smart field position.
Sterlo had officially had enough.
"What is a no-look pass? What does it do?
"The player is committed, it makes no difference to [the defender] whether the ball carrier is looking at the defender or at his support player. He's committed," Sterling said.
"They bug the s*** out of me, no-look passes. They're so unnecessary. They just take something that's easy and make it complicated."
In his ten year career with the Eels and two successful off-seasons with Hull FC in England, Sterling was considered one of the game's great innovators within the construct of how league was played in his era.
He was one of the first playmakers in a code where 'crash and bash' was followed up by 'draw and pass' to create try scoring opportunities, to instead adapt and perfect the 'wrap around' - passing the ball on and then sprinting away from his marker to go outside of the receiver and create an overlap from nothing.
He and erstwhile standoff partner Brett Kenny created so many of these chances for both the Eels and New South Wales at State of Origin level, including their halcyon year in 1986 when NSW won the first clean-sweep of the Origin series and Parramatta claimed their fourth club title in six seasons.
In that year against St George and the following season versus Easts, Sterling played so well he received the rarest of honours from Rugby League Week magazine, as the game's bible awarded him with a perfect 10/10 match rating - a feat achieved only 21 times since 1978 with Sterling the first of only three players to have done it twice.
But even then, when introducing innovation or at the very least taking a lesser known style and making it popular, Sterling still followed the coaching conventions.
Eye on the ball, hold it out in front of you with both hands so you can pass in either direction, then direct your sight towards the receiver and let it go.
Everybody does it, but the great players take their natural gifts and then just practice and practice until they do it better than the rest.
Of Cooks Islands and Maori descent, the 27-year-old Takairangi could well fancy himself a contemporary of those freakish Kiwis Benji Marshall and Shaun Johnson, who have some hand-eye co-ordination and speed to back it up which is nearly unparalleled in the 2010's.
But not everybody can do what Marshall and Johnson can do.
Heck, there were countless games where Marshall and Johnson could not do it either - their clubs the Dragons and the Warriors finishing as miserable neighbours at 10th and 11th on the NRL table after a losing 2016 season is evidence enough of that.
The Eels also finished near the bottom in 14th, although this was more to do with the deduction of 12 competition points for breeches of the salary cap.
Perhaps given the expectations of the finals were long gone, Takairangi figured there was no harm in taking a risk or two.
I've spoken in the past about my admiration for league players who defy gravity with their death-defying leaps beyond the dead-ball line to bat the ball back for improbable tries - but even here the truism of "keep your eye on the ball" holds sway.
Like Sterling, I don't believe the no-look pass is a similar evolution which can improve the sport, as the larger opportunity for error makes the gamble an unacceptable risk.
And I bet more than a few junior coaches would start tearing their hair out if their boys were copying it on the weekends.