While the oft-repeated mantra in sport is that it is a ‘results-based business’, every now and then a little slice of humanity creeps along to outweigh the harsh nuts and bolts of a win, loss or draw.

It’s one thing to put your hand up for a coaching gig when you hang up the boots, it’s quite another to make a decent fist of it. Time and again you see ex-players strolling straight into a mentoring role, at all levels of the game, as if it was merely a rudimentary extension of their on-field career. But more of than not it is a position for which they are wholly unsuited, totally unprepared for, and leads to a rapid disappearance from the game before they’ve even started.

There is an inevitable sense of déjà vu as I sit down to write this piece. Trying to put together as positive a story as possible on Penrith – in spite of their parlous position at the foot of the Shute Shield ladder, their lack of wins on the board, lack of players through the grades, lack of sponsors, and lack of money as a result – is a challenge I have taken up pretty much every year I have been covering Sydney club rugby.