ON Saturday night, North Queensland plays Newcastle. While other games are "semi-final previews", this game is a "Mad Monday preview".

Neither the Cowboys nor the Knights can realistically make the finals and in the case of NQ, that's quite startling when you look at a roster which includes Johnathan Thurston, Matt Bowen, Willie Mason, Luke O'Donnell, Matt Scott, Willie Tonga, Aaron Payne and Carl Webb.

Yet the whispers about unrest at the Cowboys have so far been just that - whispers.

On Wednesday in a column by colleague Paul Kent, we read that the players think coach Neil Henry is too "stats oriented". Paul went onto decry the rise of player power in NRL clubs - very accurately and eloquently I might add.

But the issue I want to address here is whether media representatives can ever justifiably call for a coach to be sacked.

As representatives of you, the sporting public which indirectly provides these people with their living, it is a sacred part of our duty to tell you as much as we possibly can about what's going on inside a club that may affect results.

I add "that may affect results" because that is the difference between gossip and news. If Joe Bloggs is shagging an ironwoman, that's gossip. If that ironwoman is married to Freddie Smith, Bloggs' captain, that's news.

You, as a "shareholder" in the club, have the right to know about relationships within the club that might affect its "share price" - or position on the table. You might be titilated to learn about other relationships but that's voyeurism, not public interest.

Captain Thurston's clash with football manager Dean Lance on the sidelines at Leichhardt Oval on Monday is 100 per cent newsworthy and relevant because it suggests a strained relationship within the North Queensland club.

But does our duty go further? Should we aportion blame for poor results and campaign for the guilty party to be removed?

The only time I have ever gone close, in 25 years, to calling for a coach to be sacked was in 2008, when Ricky Stuart abused referee Ashley Klein the day after his Australian side lost the World Cup final.

My reasoning was this: I don't know what sort of a job Ricky Stuart does as a coach because I only see him at media conferences. But part of the role of the coach of rugby league's leading nation is to be an ambassador for our game.

In many ways, the coach of Australia is rugby league's global frontman - and abusing match officials is not something that person should do. As a reporter, that is a concept I feel qualified to comment on.

But I don't feel qualified to comment on Neil Henry's technical qualities because he has forgotten more about tactics, defensive patterns and the like than I have ever known.

I am not qualified to comment on his personal skills because I am not there when he chats to JT, Mango, Tong or Big Willie at training or even at halftime.

What a reporter can, and should, do when covering a struggling team is relentlessly pursue as many views as possible on the reasons for the poor results. Some of the people he or she quotes may not want to be named in the stories.

But if teams are losing, someone will be unhappy. Evenually, they'll say so. That's how the media can keep clubs, coaches and players honest - by exposing the truth, not by setting agendas.