Tommy Raudonikis once said of the Queensland Maroons: “I hate them. I hate the colour. I hate the way they operate. I used to tell the boys, if you see an old lady crossing the road up there, and she’s wearing a maroon cardigan, knock her down.”
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Tommy was one of a kind and he was one of my favourites growing up.
As a Magpies fan, catching the ‘rattler’ from Woy Woy to Lidcombe Oval every chance I got is what lit the wick for my love of the game. One of Tommy’s mentors was the great Roy Masters, a bloke who would get his players to slap each other in the face to get ready for a game with a smoke hanging out of the corner of his mouth.
I was even lucky enough to go out to dinner with Roy once through my older brother Steve—whom Roy still calls “Aqua,” a nod to the Creepy Crawly pool cleaner back in those days. I think Kristian Woolf would have been a perfect fit for those old Western Suburbs Magpies teams. No crap, just hard work.
Like Roy, Kristian Woolf is a teacher by trade who understands the classroom doesn’t stop at the school gates; it just moves to the footy field. Roy did it with Tamworth High and the 1972 Australian Schoolboys; Woolf did it winning state championships with Ignatius Park College in Townsville decades later. Born in Mount Isa, Woolf grew up in a town where men didn’t tend to trade in excuses. He carries a boxer’s core into a modern coaching world that often feels soft.
Woolf praises Dolphins grit in big win | 06:04
That unyielding standard is exactly what the Dolphins hope will deliver them through this brutal mid-season dogfight that begins this weekend.
Right now, the Dolphins sit in the thick of a massive six-team logjam on 16 points. This round presents a massive opportunity to break away while Manly, the Rabbitohs, the Tigers, and the Sharks split points in their own local derbies. Winning this weekend means putting a crucial buffer between themselves and the chasing pack of the Broncos, Raiders, and Storm.
But the test of that composure comes against the very club where Woolf started his coaching path: the North Queensland Cowboys, who are also sitting on 16 points and just as desperate for the win. This time of year is completely about consolidating positions and building the consistency that carries you into September. With a brutal month against the Roosters, Tigers, and Warriors waiting on the other side of this weekend, what happens next will define the Dolphins’ season.
The Cowboys U20s side coached by Woolf in 2011.Source: Supplied
It adds an extra layer of drama that standing in Woolf’s way this weekend is one of his old pupils in Jason Taumalolo. Years after surviving those gruelling early days under Woolf in the north, Taumalolo hasn’t forgotten the lessons that shaped him.
“He was tough on us when we were coming through, but he taught us what it takes to be a first-grader,” Taumalolo says. “You didn’t want to let him down because you knew how much hard work he put into us.”
Wayne Bennett knew exactly what he was doing when he brought Woolf back home to Redcliffe. It was a masterstroke of a succession plan, pairing the ultimate bridge between eras with a man cut from the exact same cloth. You don’t go over to the rainy terraces of Merseyside, dominate the competition to claim three straight Super League titles and a Challenge Cup with St Helens, and come back a passenger.
The North Queensland Cowboys under 20 squad train at Dairy Farmers. Coach Kristian Woolf talks to his players about the training session.Source: News Corp Australia
As Great Britain and St Helens legend James Graham points out, Woolf left an undeniable legacy in the English game by refusing to compromise on his steel-cut standards.
“He didn’t care about reputations or what a bloke had done before,” Graham says. “He brought a hard, defensive steel with him, and he expected every single player to live up to it. No excuses.”
Everywhere Woolf has gone, he has won. He came to refine the Bennett method—the uncanny ability to manage the person before the player—and we saw the results of that schooling when they choked the life out of Souths 32-10 at Magic Round, and again when they ground out a tough 30-22 win on the road in Canberra.
Long before he was conquering England or sitting beside Bennett, Woolf was proving he was a trench man. As the Cowboys’ Development Manager, he was the boots on the ground for the northern frontier, clocking up thousands of kilometres driving from Townsville to the Isa and all the way up to Cape York just to find kids who could play. He coached the 2011 NYC side featuring a young Taumalolo, Michael Morgan, and Kyle Feldt. But those boys did not just wake up that good.
Kristian Woolf. Picture: Zak Simmonds.Source: News Corp Australia
Woolf had them in for early morning boxing sessions that started when the sun was barely up. The NRL staff used to get in early just to watch those sessions, using the ring as a yardstick to measure the potential and the “ticker” of the younger players. You would see Woolf there at 6:00 AM, pulling on the pads and trading shots with the late Carl “Charlie” Webb. Watching Woolf stand his ground against a powerhouse like Webbie told the coaching staff everything they needed to know.
The young blokes sparred each other to prove their mettle, too—a lesson Kalifa Faifai Loa learned the hard way when he thought he would pick a spar with Peter Ryan, the defensive coach. Ryano carried that unshakeable hardness of days gone by and put a clinic on the winger, showing those kids that talking it up means nothing if you are not willing to stay in the scrap.
Dolphins coach Kristian Woolf has trod the hard road to the NRL. Picture: NRL ImagerySource: Supplied
Woolf knew that if a young bloke could survive those mornings in the ring, the weekend’s footy would look after itself. He wasn’t hunting headlines during his assistant stints at the Broncos and the Knights, or when he went back north to build a benchmark with the Townsville Blackhawks in the Q-Cup. He was refining a style that Adrian “Happy” Thomson recognised instantly—a coach who didn’t need to yell to get respect because his presence did the talking.
Both teams will be desperate this weekend, and Woolf knows defence will be the key. So, we will leave the final say to Tommy: “go up and bash them” No crap.